That version of CP/M had some strings altered. The original error string was "CAN'T FIND Z80 SOFTCARD", and the original copyright string was "(C) 1982 Microsoft".
Yeah, googled the error, it was mentioned on groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.apple2/c/KKUuO_vMs7U : "I still get "CAN'T FIND Z80 SOFTCARD" (or, in the hack, "CAN'T FIND STUPID CARD.""
I had The Lazer 128 simular to the one featured on this video but it wasn't the EX, thank you for doing a vid on this computer it was totally underrated and it brought back some good ole memories from my youth
If I remember the Apple joystick right (or at least the paddles), it uses a software loop to determine how long it takes a bit to flip. This was how Woz was able to avoid using an expensive A/D converter. He used software to count how long it took an R/C circuit to discharge and flip a bit. So a higher speed CPU would screw this all up.
Not quite... the only thing you got wrong is you read a memory location to _discharge_ the capacitor and count how long it takes to _charge_ (not the other way around). You're also right in that the faster CPU speed would screw up most paddle games unless you modified the game, or unless VTech had the foresight to modify the built-in PREAD function to take CPU speed into account.
I keep a jar of plastic slurry for things like this (broken lid.) Just a glass jar with a screw-on top. Fill it with some acetone, drop in some generic beige plastic parts (broken CD tray, keycaps, etc.) After a couple days, it’ll be soup. It will off-gas the acetone and at some point turn solid. No worries. Reconstitute and carry on. I have been trying to fix the front of a 3.5” floppy drive that needed some TLC. Trying to put the flap back in the two retaining slots requires bending the flap, which has resulted in it snapping three times now. Apply plastic weld with Q-tip, smoosh parts back together, hold for a minute, set it aside for a day. Use an Xacto knife to trim off the splooge, sand with progressive grits, looks almost good as new! (Minus texture.)
The expansion port on the Laser 128 is *mostly* Apple II compatible, but is really meant to be used with the expansion box. They put the slot 5 enable on an unused pin, and the expansion box routes it to the right place for 5. Without the box, only slot 7 will be properly enabled, as you discovered.
I remember back in elementary school in the mid 80's. The classroom I was in had 3 Apple IIGS's. The teacher got a copy of Jeopardy! for the Apple II. When it was running it was discovered that it was running too fast. We couldn't type the answere fast enough before the timer ran out. So two of those IIGS's the speed was slowed down to make that game playable. Great videos keep up the good work.
I also have that Applied Engineering Z-80 Plus card. There is a version of CP/M made specifically for the card called CP/AM that you should be able to find online.
I might be mistaken but I believe the founder of Applied Engineering is discussing the old days in one of the main Apple II groups on Facebook. If not, it's the founder of another 3rd Party company that made Z-80 cards for the Apple II that was founded by a former Apple employee with Woz's financial assistance.
@@Rudofaux Yeah, could have gone on: "have you even plugged the goddamn thing"? But back then you didn't want to waste resources with lots of text, right?
Whoa, nice screen capturing! In some ways I like the aesthetic of seeing your screen and your fingers together, but it’s certainly much easier to show the things like the colour fringing and stuff, and the graphics are really crisp.
The Apple I/II and Laser clones were a series of computers I missed in my childhood to the point I didn't even know they existed until I watched your channel. Lots of great history here how they tried to clone the Apple II line and did a decent job of it too I might add. I did know about Apple, but only starting with the Apple Mac Classic and up.
The 3.whatever mhz. clock speed of the later Apple II machines (and clone!) always made me a little envious as a C64 user. Yes we had a greater software library but subLogic's flight simulators, etc., all seemed to run so smooth compared to my 64!
Check out the videos on TH-cam of Flight Simulator II and Karateka running on an Atari 8-bit computer with a 65816 upgrade to see how fast those games can play...
Such a fascinating machine and amazing degree of compatibility. The 40/80 column implementation seems to be a direct result of the clean room reverse engineering. Neat stuff. The "turbo" modes are pretty mindblowing as well, going up to 300% performance no less.
Yes IIRC Total Replay will run at full system speed in it's menu but will lower the speed down in games so they work correctly. This was done to support an Apple IIgs that's set to it's fast system speed so you don't have to keep going into Control Panel to switch it back and forth.
@@adriansdigitalbasement The technical reference manual mentions that address $C074 is used to control the speed. It uses bit 7 and 6. 00 and 01 are 1mhz, 10 is 2.3, and 11 is 3.6 mhz. I'd also make a guess that the crash issues you experienced are related to some sort of timing issue between the CPU and the rest of the system. The CPU actually slows down when it accesses various parts of the system to maintain compatibility. I found the technical reference manual here:www.apple.asimov.net/documentation/hardware/machines/Laser%20128%20Series%20Technical%20Reference%20Manual.pdf
Fyi: a good way to repair plastic like that is to pin it in place. First glue it with something like epoxy or crazy glue. Then get some thin graphite fiber rod from the hobby shop. Drill one or more small holes though the part across the break such that the graphite rod fits snugly then glue it in place. (Generally you need a drill press, doing it by hand usually ends up with a mess) Graphite rod is crazy strong and and makes a great reinforcement. A similar repair can be dobe on the little doors that use little nibs of plastic as higes when the little nibs break or wear off. Drill a hole though,cpress a piece of appropriately sized graphite rod in place and your good to go.
This is the computer I had when I was a kid and we spent hours reading magazines and typing in programs. All the Apple magazines of the day had basic programs in there
I love the fact that you keep some of the retro tech going there Adrian. Never saw the Laser series computers but most of the others you have on your channel. I did a quick search on ROMs for the laser and found one that is a latter version that someone copied off of a 128ex/2. I did download it unless you have already found it. Good luck on getting it to do more things.
The "booti" card is da bomb. I recently got one, you will LOVE it! I stopped using my FloppyEMU. It is the affordable solution most of us are looking for. It takes standard USB flash drives with standard windows FAT32 filesystem and allows you to attach any prodos ordered (.po) disk image to the Apple II. Just make/edit .po disk images on a PC using CiderPress, chuck them on the USB, and attach via the booti's configuration menu. You can even attach multiple images at the same time! 32MB .po for booting GS/OS 6.0.2? No problem! $60? No brainer!
I can say that when we got our IIGS in 1986 we couldn't get a 3.5" drive... They weren't available yet. Instead we got a Unidisk 3.5" which wouldn't play some games and was a little slower. I mowed lawns all summer just to buy a $385 3.5" drive to play Bard Tale.
If the CPU is a WD65C02. The reason some programs may lock up or reboot may be because some programs may be using the undocumented op-codes in the MOS 6502 that are unsupported on the WD65C02..
As I recall, the 65C02 had 10 extra instructions over the 6502...maybe WD/Rockwell (the two companies that made the 65C02) just documented some hidden instructions? The //c and the Enhanced //e also reintroduced the mini assembler that was in the original Apple ][ ROM's, and didn't make the cut in the ][+/ original //e ROM's. You can tell an Enhanced //e in two ways: the boot screen shows "Apple //e" (instead of "Apple ][") on the boot screen, and if you enter the system monitor, and type "!" at the * prompt, you get the ! prompt (and are in the mini assembler). You can enter assembly language directly in that prompt, but it's a little lame in that it doesn't take mnemonics (unlike a nice software assembler!)
I've seen a CP/M card in a IIc. It had to connect so that it piggybacked off the IIc's CPU socket, and sat right behind the keyboard's PCB. This particular IIc was also configured with the Dvorak keyboard layout. We also had a few of the Laser 128's in our middle school. Not sure if they were the EX version, though. They did have the expansion unit which gave a cage for the slot 5 and 7 cards. The school had a mix of Platinum IIe's and Laser 128's all networked together so they could share one hard drive, which was connected to a IIgs that was configured as the server. Talking about the UniDisk 3.5 reminds me that they did make a Superdrive card for the IIe and IIgs that let you use a high density drive on them. Haven't seen one in person, but did see them in an Apple catalog sometime around the end of the IIe's life span.
I always knew the Lasers were out there back in the day but I had no idea they were so affordable vs. the actual Apple II.. That plus all of the added hardware functionality made this a killer deal. My Dad also got me a //c in 1985 and spent at least double that!
I'm envious. I always wanted a CPM card but never had one. :) You're making me want to dig my Laser 128EX out of storage. I still run some of my old Apple 2 games in emulation, but hearing those disk drive noises is making me feel nostalgic.
I had this machine when I was a kid and it was so much fun to read the Apple magazines and to type in the programs that were in there some were really boring and irrelevant and somewhere really awesome. And one of the Apple magazines there was a voice synthesizer and I typed that program in and it actually ran really good
On the slot 5 vs slot7 issue, the expansion connector is prewired as you say to be physically slot 7. Two connections not normally used for slot 7 on an apple2 contain the select pins for slot5 and are routed to the secondary slot in the expansion box. I used my original laser 128 as a high school student in the 1990s with an AE Phasor in the side slot, and it always appeared as 7. Also, the cp/m card may give you a hard time on this machine due to DMA timing needs since the card relies on the apple/laser computer's ram to operate, especially if you're not running at 1mhz. I never tried it with a softcard style cp/m card. However, an applicard style cp/m card should work at any speed, as I use mine with a IIgs at full speed and my IIe with a transwarp at 3.6mhz. :) Last, try finding an AE cp/m disk, as it might take advantage of some hidden things on the AE card.
The only carp with these machines was always the quality of the keyboard build. They were notorious for having larger keys (space, shift, return esp.) breaking off in ways that weren't easily fixed. The //c keyboard was much more robust.
Alot of games, to prevent tearing, frame lock using a vertical sync function (not sure that 6502 has it, but the 6809 does), and in those cases, regardless of speed of the processor, the game will always run at the same speed (although faster speeds will make it run a bit smoother).
Yeah the Apple natively doesn't have any kind of vertical interrupt available for that. I think the mouse hardware does but it's definitely not stock on any Apple II. :-(
The 6809 was such a superior processor to the 6502! I enjoyed programming assembly language on my Color Computer 3 a lot, not that I really did anything useful.
@@Starchface It definitely was but Motorola wouldn't license it as loosely as the MOS 6502 had been so it never reached the same level of success. Look at the Atari Lynx released in 1989. It has a 6502 because Motorola wouldn't grant a similar license to Epyx/Atari Corp offering customization of the 6809 - and the 68000 too for that matter - as was available for the 6502 from the start.
That speed issue reminds of the days with my first PC, a 80286 machine. It had a turbo switch, to switch between I believe 4.77 MHz and 16MHz. The 4.77MHz mode was for speed compatibility with older Intel systems. I remember the game digdug was unplayable in 16Mhz mode because it ran too fast. Putting the machine in 4.77MHz mode made the game run just fine.
Gotta wonder how well the AppleWorks spreadsheet works at 3+ MHz. I recall building some sheets which took a while to run on a stock Apple //e (decades ago, of course). The higher speed would've been really nice. WRT copying floppies, might wanna try running the Laser at a higher clock rate. The Apple //e had difficulty running terminal programs. It worked just fine when everything fit on the screen but, when the screen had to scroll, it was not uncommon to lose the first couple characters because scrolling the screen ate several milliseconds and the Apple Serial Card had 1 byte of buffering, meaning multiple characters were sent before the terminal program could check the port. I discovered this while trying to use an Apple //e as a terminal connected to an Osborne O1 (52 column screen, physically painful keyboard). I could run at 300 baud (but who wants to do that) without issue but 1200 baud lost characters when the screen scrolled. I have no experience with a //c so I can't speak to how well those worked. The fact that you could copy floppies at 115,200 on the //c means they likely had more hardware buffering on the serial ports.
Just a minor clarification but on the IBM PC and compatibles, games written for AT and later PC and compatibles check the CPU and adjust their speed but not games written for the IBM 5150 or XT (or compatibles wit the same CPU) as they just assumed the clock speed was 4.77 MHz as that was the only CPU speed option at the time on those machines. That is why latter PC compatible machines include the misnamed Turbo button, which contrary to its name does not speed up the machine when pushed but rather slows it down to 4.77 MHz so older games assuming the speed will run at the correct speed. I’m sure the namer of the turbo button might argue that Turbo mode is on default on those machines so pushing the button deactivates the mode thus the button is not misnamed but I’d argue it’s still confusing in that case regardless.
Even more confusing, while most turbo buttons slowed it down when pushed in, a minority of them were the other way around, slow until you push it in. In which case they’re more in line with the name and thus in some ways less confusing, but since the operation is opposite on most machines as you say, that makes it more confusing overall because people don’t expect pushing it in to make it faster.
the other computer was jealous and the cover fell out of spite and anger because you were paying too much attention to the laser hahaha, it was like "that's not even a real apple!!" hahahaha.
I was thinking the same thing. It felt bad when he started playing with the 128. But when he opened up the real Apple II and took a card out of it to put in the 128? "That sir, is taking it too far!" LOL
Around the 9.00 mark I thought you were doing a dance party! Joke aside, when you used Dazzler Draw in the highest speed I notice it wasn't doing the flood fills correctly, it was not filling some area's. Anyway, another fun video even though I'm not a huge Apple fan..Paul..
@@sittingstill3578 Whilst I agree I should have used a colon I find your reply a bit confrontational..I don't think the mistake needed that tone..Relax...
@@Mclaneinc I was just trying to help. I enjoy finding time stamps in comments so I can see what others have enjoyed. As a result I try to clarify how this works for folks for the enjoyment of everyone. Thanks for sharing the reference!
It could be due to the way some games were coded an exception is generated, like for instance a divide by zero error. Could also happen due to hardware, memory not keeping up, but then dazzledraw should lock up too.
@23:06 IF it really is ABS, use Nitro, put one drop of Nitro on the crack of either piece, wait 15 to 20 seconds. It will soften up the surface and let you glue it together without introducing foreign chemical substances. Works perfectly on lego and derivates.
The IIc has a timer-the mouse card. Nobody used it to detect the speed of the system though. Likewise the IIgs has timer hardware that can be used. Older machines … it might be possible using some trickery, but nobody did that either.
The story behind the 5 1/4" drive being driven almost entirely through software that Woz wrote is essentially correct, but there is a lot of interesting stuff to the story. It's worth looking up the whole story, but briefly, the reason it's mostly driven through software is because when Apple went to Shugart back in the day for disk drives, their drives had a controller chip and was a total package, but was very expensive. Something like 2-3x the cost of a bare drive. Apple balked, so Shugart gave them some bare drives to test, thinking Apple would get frustrated without the controller chips and come back to Shugart and pay the price for the full package. That gambit failed, as Apple had Woz, who simply (for him) read through the schematics and wrote routines to drive the drive through software, and I'm talking from the bare metal. He had to create an encoding scheme of the bits, and as there was no track 0 sensor due to not having those controller chips, he simply sent 40 "minus 1 track" commands upon start up, which is why it does that "Grrrrr-dt-dt-dt-dt-dt" upon power up. Shugart was shocked when Apple came back and put in a large order for the bare drives. Never doubt The Woz. Wiki has an account of some of this at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_II but it's worth looking up Woz's recollections too.
Actually the Laser 128 EX has a COMPLETELY different but compatible disk controller in slot 7. It's known as a UDC (Universal Disc Controller). VTech sold it as an add in card for the //e.
There was an Applied Engineering Z-80 1 Megabyte card I had for the Apple IIc that was mounted internally. Lots of bank switched memory and when using assembly language.
23:00 I can't speak to it myself, but I've heard other people mention plastic revitalizers/rejuvinators/conditioners that help with old, brittle plastic like this to help restore some of their elasticity to that they don't just snap apart like that. The comments I've seen say that it works in a lot of cases. What exactly the product is that you use, I can't say for sure, but Google will likely point you in the right direction.
The joystick doesn't work with the faster clocks because the "A/D" conversion is done by using an oscillator (I believe it's a 556) where the variable resistance changes the timing: the internal routines measure the time in cycles, and for this reason the measures for the joystick will be completely off.
This episode just reminds me how much Apple was getting it's rear end kicked by Amiga. Amiga Really did run the roost until PC came along and after that Apple just took it's place. Though I personally think we should have a third platform like Amiga back instead of Linux. Listen, I don't hate Linux but the fracturing of that is so wide that it becomes hard to know certain things and what you want to choose and what runs what. An Amiga return would be a great thing in my opinion.
Linux is not really fractured. You pick the distribution that you like and almost everything will be compatible. The distribution's native package management generally takes care of installing whatever is needed to make an application work. From a user perspective the differences between distributions boils down to two things: the details of the initial installation process, and the provided package management system. The vast majority of software applications are compatible with any of the mainstream distributions. Maintenance and updates are automatic and generally much smoother than anything Microsoft can do.
@@Starchface Like I said I don't hate Linux but there are too many distos and not enough people know what you just said. The same can be said for an Amiga comeback but at least with that there are far fewer options. I just don't see a Linux type of computer. A hardware software combo that touches people like the standard windows and macs have. Yes, windows have a standard. Usually an Amd or Intel cpu with Nvidia or Amd Gpu and windows os. There isn't much variation there anymore. Macs well we know them. I just want to see an alternative that isn't Linux. I love Amiga and have passion for that and would love to see that brought forward.
@@valentine_puppy The thing that made PCs boring was the very thing that made them a success. They have no "personality" because the operating system and user environment is in software, and the hardware interface is an open standard. PCs typically were minimally equipped and could keep costs down. Commodore and others initially tried to compete with the IBM standard, but ultimately failed due to closed architectures and the costs of having to implement a lot of hardware that on IBM, users could just buy as needed. That said, I remember well the excitement of sitting down at an Apple ][ or a C64 or a TI99 as a kid and thinking, what can I do with this thing? I will never forget those days. It was a Golden Age.
Adrian- to fix that, try Jet Glue. I've used it on C-64's and it works great. My daughter is a dancer, and she uses it on her shoes. I broke a tab off my breadbin and decided to try it, and it works!!
I had this machine when I was young, but I don't remember having any software issues with the faster speeds. I do remember having trouble running a few games we bought. We had this disk called "Vegas games" but one of the games (I believe it was the 2nd game on the menu) would crash no matter what we did.
Even if the Laser didn't have the IWM chip for the disk drive, it still might work with the 6502 running at warp speed! Try cpm after adding the additional ram. The B version must have been sysgened for more memory.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING - plastic weld is a liquid polystyrene plastic glue used by fine scale modelers. It actually melts the plastic together and is a little tricky to use. You apply it so that capillarity (surface tension) draws the liquid into the crack. It bonds nearly instantly so must be done carefully. You can find it at hobby shops. If done right you will not even know that broken piece was missing.
Should have mentioned - that type of glue is always applied from the INSIDE so that it doesn't mar the exterior finish. I used this stuff on my models and the results were both incredibly strong and very nice to look at. I'm sure this stuff is acetone-based and will work on just about any brittle plastic.
I had a separate metal assembly that plugged into the expansion port that'd fit two Apple IIe form factor cards, so the port might have some stuff to support that. Sadly, all that was thrown away years ago...
Could be a soft boot issue too. I think there where cases where certain memory addresses would get "corrupted" if you did certain things, and you literally had to either a) shut down, and restart the machine, or use a program to "set" those addresses back to the correct values for the expanded memory to work right again. Also - PC games could only adjust within certain limits. Really old games literally "couldn't" tell how to react to a processor that was far too fast for it. Basically, anything made for the original PCs, or a 286, if you ran it on something like a Pentium, *would* run into problems with speed, and there where actually utilities that used system interrupts to attempt to insert clock cycles (often badly), to "adjust" the speed such old games ran at. So, PC games *did* have the same problem, but later games where smarter.
You said in first video they were selling card adapter that made posible connect two cards into that side connector(for extra 50 bucks or so). Maybe thats why is slot 5 not working, as that expansion card has most likely own controller, setting one to slot 5 and second to slot 7.
We had those expansion bays in our middle school, they were pretty simple. I don't think they even had any extra chips inside, just wiring to make one slot appear as 5 and the other as 7. The Apple II expansion slots use a bus configuration to connect with the rest of the machine, which means a lot of the pins are shared between all the slots, while certain pins were used to identify specific slots.
@@evknucklehead Hm. Im assuming this machine has to diversify between two cards that could be potentionaly used and need to know which one it wants talk to. It cant use both of them at same time, so there has to be way to tell one to "shut up, im talking to other one". I guess its pin 1 and 34 on machine's connector? It leads to pin 1 on slot 5 and 7 connector...whatever it is(they are marked as SC5XX and SC7XX). It means you could make your own adapter easilly. From schematics, theres just simple power circuit thats... kind of weird. Why it needs external 10V if it can take 12V directly from machine. For diode and +5V? I let Adrian to brainstorm it, i have no clue how those Apples works.
@@cyphi474 I think it was a design choice so they wouldn't have to include a larger power supply in the Laser 128 itself. The machines were already quite cramped inside with all those expansion options built-in, and it was already much heavier and about twice as thick as the IIc. Also, in those days, the 12v rail wasn't nearly as important as it is in today's PSU's, so designers didn't make much current available on that line. As for selecting the active slot, if I remember correctly, the Address lines on the bus were used for this purpose, with each slot having a specific range of addresses associated with it. This is similar to how PCs do things even today, with a major difference being how those addresses are allocated. On the Apple II series and its clones (and a lot of other 8-bit computers) these addresses are built into the hardware itself, while modern PCs can assign those addresses as needed.
@@cyphi474 Both slots would be populated, but only one could ever be active at a given instant. The CPU can easily switch back and forth between slots as it performs its tasks, though, so it may seem like both are always active, even though in that instant they are not.
Yes, the address is $C030. Through an address decoder and some glue logic, it triggers the “T” input of a toggle flip-flop, where one of the outputs is connected to the speaker through a current-limiting resistor. The other end of the speaker wire is grounded. A similar thing happens if you read $C010, but that toggles the tape (cassette) output instead. Or maybe it’s $C020, I forget. It stands to reason that most, if not all, games for the Apple ][ series work only at the 1 MHz speed; they would probably be unplayable at the higher speeds, especially at the higher difficulty settings. And some might not work at all due to copy protection, or just because the routines for the Disk ][ drives wouldn’t work at the higher speed. It’d be interesting to find out which programs will ir will jot work at the higher speeds.
You actually can make a floppy disk for a IIc from source on the Floppy Emu. I've done it with both ProDOS and choplifter. You should maybe look into that again... You need to have the Floppy Emu internally connected if I recall...
You are right, the 40/80 col card on a IIc does practically nothing. As far as the 3.5 disk drive, on the IIc there are 4 rom revisions. On the later rom revisions (0,3,4) they have the hardware to handle smartport drives and the original rom revision (255) does not.
I had a Laser 128 as my first machine, my father worked for a company that sold them. Every school in my area used them as well since they were significantly cheaper than the Apple IIe and IIc. The laser 128 is a IIe clone (rom wise) in a IIc style case. The one advantage the IIc has is it's keyboard is significantly better.
Regarding the side card slot, I had an external expansion chassis that plugged into the slot so your cards would be covered and protected. You can find them on ebay from time to time.
@@MrCodyswanson Did VTech actually sell the expansion chassis or was that 3rd Party hardware? I was just thinking about that. TI sold an expansion chassis for the TI-99 4A in its latter days. Atari designed the 1090 for the XL line for the very same reason but never released it.
Ok so lets review... a) the higher clock rate (level 3) on the Laser 128EX corrupts a drive at 39:50; also making games unstable and sound is messed up; b) then at 4:15 contrary to the Apple you need to turn off the machine so it can read 80 column mode or it hangs if you switch from one to the other (or use both as in Dazzle Draw); c) and at a point you had to use the actual Apple IIc for a task at 36:52... also the problem you had with the RAM disk never got resolved. hmmm. Is this really proving the Laser 128EX is better? Don't get me wrong there seems to be plenty of interesting little fine tunes - but when you actually have the software and don't need to reformat or change your drives each time this machine seems much more buggy, unstable and less user-friendly than the actual machine... as is the case with most clones.
Can't the software detect video sync? If so, that would be a 60Hz timing source. Console video games are timed that way, so I wouldn't be surprised if some Apple games were programmed like that also.
That's why you gotta put stuff back together even if it's not screwed down and put stuff away until you need it again.. What a shame that nice computer case got broke because of that .
23:00 - if the ABS plastic welding is not an option, maybe you could try CA glue+baking soda. Look it up, it gives a lot of structural strenght and you can use it on surfaces that are not visible.
So I was looking at bit more at the tab -- sadly that specific broken part is what clamps onto the lower section of the case, so it needs to fit perfectly over this ridge in the lower section. Meaning when I glue it, it cannot have any glue "oozing" from the crack, even on the underside. I think the ABS welding is going to be my only option.... I would normally try to reinforce it with some extra ABS but unless I do it on the OUTSIDE it won't be possible. What a pain!!
@@adriansdigitalbasement Ohh, I see, that's bad news. Good luck on fixing it! By the way, did you find the CA glue+baking soda trick? It might be useful in the future. Cheers!
I am a fan of the AppleIIc, so this is very interesting stuff! How was the Laser perceived at the time? With disdain by “real” Apple users? or a legit option? Given the significantly lower price, would Apple fans buy a Laser as a back-up?
The problem with running the CPU faster with games is that it just runs the slow game faster. Like if a game is 3 frames per second and you increase the machine's speed by 3 times, it doesn't run at 9fps in the sense that would be useful. It will still fun at 3fps, just with shorter seconds. It's hard to explain what I mean, but it is very easy to see when you actually do it. It just runs slowly, only faster if that makes sense.
I used to have a Laser 128ex back in the 80's, but sold it when I upgraded to an Apple IIgs. The 128ex was a good computer (and cheap, compared to Apple), but while it was good it was not 100% compatible. To keep things legal the ROM had to be reversed engineered, not an exact copy. The expansion slot was rather quirky as well, and to get it to work at all I had to buy the expansion box which supported two slots. Again, it was not 100% compatible and certain expansion cards would not work.
The zx spectrum had some tricks even with the missing timer: im2 interrupts (generated with raster 50 times /second), or floating bus. Did not had something similar on the Apple 2? It's really curious for me since I had the Macintosh back then (128k), and that computer had very crappy games in comparison.
On //e and later machines, you can poll I/O location $C019 to tell when the display's in vertical-blanking, intended to help with flicker-free screen updates, but this could also be used to calibrate a timing loop for different CPU speeds by counting elapsed cycles per 60Hz field. Also, when a mouse interface "card" is present (including inbuilt ones in the //c, //GS, and Laser 128*) it can be set to trigger an actual Vsync interrupt, though the mouse firmware uses this itself, so you'd want to set the vector back after calibrating to avoid breaking that. As far as I know, no games used either method, maybe because early Apples (II, II+) didn't support it, and accelerators were uncommon, especially early in the life of the platform.
What is that card called that has an SD card reader on the side? I'm interested in getting one for my Laser 128 base model. Although, the floppy drive works just fine and I don't have a notch to make a side 2 of the diskettes. Also, was there an adapter that allows you to plug in an Apple mouse and a joystick at the same time or not really? It's also amazing that you can boot from an 800KB 3.5" drive, FloppyEmu, and that card that was on the side.
🤘😁🤘 Lucky you having such beautiful machine. I wanted to buy it but in Europe it's quite challening to get it. Sometimes it's available on ebay in USA but importing it would cost a fortune... :(
![Apple ][ plus: VIDEX 80 column card, CPM on the Apple II and servicing the disk drives](/img/n.gif)
Adrian, your videos are never too long.
That version of CP/M had some strings altered. The original error string was "CAN'T FIND Z80 SOFTCARD", and the original copyright string was "(C) 1982 Microsoft".
Yeah, googled the error, it was mentioned on groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.apple2/c/KKUuO_vMs7U : "I still get "CAN'T FIND
Z80 SOFTCARD" (or, in the hack, "CAN'T FIND STUPID CARD.""
Every time RIck Astley dancing came up on the little screen, I was totally mesmerized and can't recall what you were talking about... lol
I had The Lazer 128 simular to the one featured on this video but it wasn't the EX, thank you for doing a vid on this computer it was totally underrated and it brought back some good ole memories from my youth
If I remember the Apple joystick right (or at least the paddles), it uses a software loop to determine how long it takes a bit to flip. This was how Woz was able to avoid using an expensive A/D converter. He used software to count how long it took an R/C circuit to discharge and flip a bit. So a higher speed CPU would screw this all up.
Not quite... the only thing you got wrong is you read a memory location to _discharge_ the capacitor and count how long it takes to _charge_ (not the other way around). You're also right in that the faster CPU speed would screw up most paddle games unless you modified the game, or unless VTech had the foresight to modify the built-in PREAD function to take CPU speed into account.
@@SpearM3064 Well... I like my solution better! 😃
The PC game port used the same technique.
@@0LoneTech And the Atari 2600 reading it's paddles.
I keep a jar of plastic slurry for things like this (broken lid.) Just a glass jar with a screw-on top. Fill it with some acetone, drop in some generic beige plastic parts (broken CD tray, keycaps, etc.) After a couple days, it’ll be soup.
It will off-gas the acetone and at some point turn solid. No worries. Reconstitute and carry on.
I have been trying to fix the front of a 3.5” floppy drive that needed some TLC. Trying to put the flap back in the two retaining slots requires bending the flap, which has resulted in it snapping three times now.
Apply plastic weld with Q-tip, smoosh parts back together, hold for a minute, set it aside for a day. Use an Xacto knife to trim off the splooge, sand with progressive grits, looks almost good as new! (Minus texture.)
The expansion port on the Laser 128 is *mostly* Apple II compatible, but is really meant to be used with the expansion box. They put the slot 5 enable on an unused pin, and the expansion box routes it to the right place for 5. Without the box, only slot 7 will be properly enabled, as you discovered.
Apple II have so many new cards that making testing combination of cards crazy! And it's where the fun is.
I remember back in elementary school in the mid 80's. The classroom I was in had 3 Apple IIGS's. The teacher got a copy of Jeopardy! for the Apple II. When it was running it was discovered that it was running too fast. We couldn't type the answere fast enough before the timer ran out. So two of those IIGS's the speed was slowed down to make that game playable. Great videos keep up the good work.
I also have that Applied Engineering Z-80 Plus card. There is a version of CP/M made specifically for the card called CP/AM that you should be able to find online.
I might be mistaken but I believe the founder of Applied Engineering is discussing the old days in one of the main Apple II groups on Facebook. If not, it's the founder of another 3rd Party company that made Z-80 cards for the Apple II that was founded by a former Apple employee with Woz's financial assistance.
Please do a 24hr live stream event! All digital basement All day… would be epic
I used to work for this company back in the mid-80's -- specifically on these machines. Wow -- talk about a flashback to younger days.
lmao "CAN'T FIND STUPID CARD"
That made my day
Finally some common language.
@@Rudofaux Yeah, could have gone on: "have you even plugged the goddamn thing"? But back then you didn't want to waste resources with lots of text, right?
@@BilisNegra sounds about right.
Guru meditation is funnier. And, really, "Cant find stupid card" is way better than "Error number 32856"
Best error message I've ever seen since "printer is on fire"
Whoa, nice screen capturing! In some ways I like the aesthetic of seeing your screen and your fingers together, but it’s certainly much easier to show the things like the colour fringing and stuff, and the graphics are really crisp.
The Apple I/II and Laser clones were a series of computers I missed in my childhood to the point I didn't even know they existed until I watched your channel. Lots of great history here how they tried to clone the Apple II line and did a decent job of it too I might add. I did know about Apple, but only starting with the Apple Mac Classic and up.
The 3.whatever mhz. clock speed of the later Apple II machines (and clone!) always made me a little envious as a C64 user. Yes we had a greater software library but subLogic's flight simulators, etc., all seemed to run so smooth compared to my 64!
Check out the videos on TH-cam of Flight Simulator II and Karateka running on an Atari 8-bit computer with a 65816 upgrade to see how fast those games can play...
31:38 "CAN'T FIND STUPID CARD." lol, I was not prepared.
Such a fascinating machine and amazing degree of compatibility. The 40/80 column implementation seems to be a direct result of the clean room reverse engineering. Neat stuff. The "turbo" modes are pretty mindblowing as well, going up to 300% performance no less.
360%, if you want to get picky. :)
Yes IIRC Total Replay will run at full system speed in it's menu but will lower the speed down in games so they work correctly. This was done to support an Apple IIgs that's set to it's fast system speed so you don't have to keep going into Control Panel to switch it back and forth.
Ah nice. I wonder if the Laser and IIgs use the same memory location to slow down the system?
@@adriansdigitalbasement The technical reference manual mentions that address $C074 is used to control the speed. It uses bit 7 and 6. 00 and 01 are 1mhz, 10 is 2.3, and 11 is 3.6 mhz.
I'd also make a guess that the crash issues you experienced are related to some sort of timing issue between the CPU and the rest of the system. The CPU actually slows down when it accesses various parts of the system to maintain compatibility.
I found the technical reference manual here:www.apple.asimov.net/documentation/hardware/machines/Laser%20128%20Series%20Technical%20Reference%20Manual.pdf
Fyi: a good way to repair plastic like that is to pin it in place. First glue it with something like epoxy or crazy glue. Then get some thin graphite fiber rod from the hobby shop. Drill one or more small holes though the part across the break such that the graphite rod fits snugly then glue it in place. (Generally you need a drill press, doing it by hand usually ends up with a mess) Graphite rod is crazy strong and and makes a great reinforcement.
A similar repair can be dobe on the little doors that use little nibs of plastic as higes when the little nibs break or wear off. Drill a hole though,cpress a piece of appropriately sized graphite rod in place and your good to go.
Dazzle Draw! I’d forgotten all about that program!
Wow, I'm fascinated by the Laser 128EX. So far, it looks like a perfect piece of hardware for early Apple II fans.
This is the computer I had when I was a kid and we spent hours reading magazines and typing in programs. All the Apple magazines of the day had basic programs in there
I love the fact that you keep some of the retro tech going there Adrian. Never saw the Laser series computers but most of the others you have on your channel. I did a quick search on ROMs for the laser and found one that is a latter version that someone copied off of a 128ex/2. I did download it unless you have already found it. Good luck on getting it to do more things.
The "booti" card is da bomb. I recently got one, you will LOVE it! I stopped using my FloppyEMU. It is the affordable solution most of us are looking for. It takes standard USB flash drives with standard windows FAT32 filesystem and allows you to attach any prodos ordered (.po) disk image to the Apple II. Just make/edit .po disk images on a PC using CiderPress, chuck them on the USB, and attach via the booti's configuration menu. You can even attach multiple images at the same time! 32MB .po for booting GS/OS 6.0.2? No problem! $60? No brainer!
i’d love to see what motherboard and chips are inside this //c clone. great video!
I can say that when we got our IIGS in 1986 we couldn't get a 3.5" drive... They weren't available yet. Instead we got a Unidisk 3.5" which wouldn't play some games and was a little slower. I mowed lawns all summer just to buy a $385 3.5" drive to play Bard Tale.
Probably someone said it already but, gotta love that Retrotink. Great to see you leveraging it here!
If the CPU is a WD65C02. The reason some programs may lock up or reboot may be because some programs may be using the undocumented op-codes in the MOS 6502 that are unsupported on the WD65C02..
lol well that's BS!
The Apple //c and Enhanced //e both used a 65C02
As I recall, the 65C02 had 10 extra instructions over the 6502...maybe WD/Rockwell (the two companies that made the 65C02) just documented some hidden instructions? The //c and the Enhanced //e also reintroduced the mini assembler that was in the original Apple ][ ROM's, and didn't make the cut in the ][+/ original //e ROM's. You can tell an Enhanced //e in two ways: the boot screen shows "Apple //e" (instead of "Apple ][") on the boot screen, and if you enter the system monitor, and type "!" at the * prompt, you get the ! prompt (and are in the mini assembler). You can enter assembly language directly in that prompt, but it's a little lame in that it doesn't take mnemonics (unlike a nice software assembler!)
I've seen a CP/M card in a IIc. It had to connect so that it piggybacked off the IIc's CPU socket, and sat right behind the keyboard's PCB. This particular IIc was also configured with the Dvorak keyboard layout.
We also had a few of the Laser 128's in our middle school. Not sure if they were the EX version, though. They did have the expansion unit which gave a cage for the slot 5 and 7 cards. The school had a mix of Platinum IIe's and Laser 128's all networked together so they could share one hard drive, which was connected to a IIgs that was configured as the server.
Talking about the UniDisk 3.5 reminds me that they did make a Superdrive card for the IIe and IIgs that let you use a high density drive on them. Haven't seen one in person, but did see them in an Apple catalog sometime around the end of the IIe's life span.
I always knew the Lasers were out there back in the day but I had no idea they were so affordable vs. the actual Apple II.. That plus all of the added hardware functionality made this a killer deal. My Dad also got me a //c in 1985 and spent at least double that!
Your description and links to videos are on point... wow!😊
I'm envious. I always wanted a CPM card but never had one. :) You're making me want to dig my Laser 128EX out of storage. I still run some of my old Apple 2 games in emulation, but hearing those disk drive noises is making me feel nostalgic.
I had this machine when I was a kid and it was so much fun to read the Apple magazines and to type in the programs that were in there some were really boring and irrelevant and somewhere really awesome. And one of the Apple magazines there was a voice synthesizer and I typed that program in and it actually ran really good
On the slot 5 vs slot7 issue, the expansion connector is prewired as you say to be physically slot 7. Two connections not normally used for slot 7 on an apple2 contain the select pins for slot5 and are routed to the secondary slot in the expansion box. I used my original laser 128 as a high school student in the 1990s with an AE Phasor in the side slot, and it always appeared as 7.
Also, the cp/m card may give you a hard time on this machine due to DMA timing needs since the card relies on the apple/laser computer's ram to operate, especially if you're not running at 1mhz. I never tried it with a softcard style cp/m card. However, an applicard style cp/m card should work at any speed, as I use mine with a IIgs at full speed and my IIe with a transwarp at 3.6mhz. :) Last, try finding an AE cp/m disk, as it might take advantage of some hidden things on the AE card.
@4:52 “So if you’re working on a laser 128…” 😂 hrm, have a feeling this won’t be the case for many of us. Thx for sharing as always!
The only carp with these machines was always the quality of the keyboard build. They were notorious for having larger keys (space, shift, return esp.) breaking off in ways that weren't easily fixed.
The //c keyboard was much more robust.
Alot of games, to prevent tearing, frame lock using a vertical sync function (not sure that 6502 has it, but the 6809 does), and in those cases, regardless of speed of the processor, the game will always run at the same speed (although faster speeds will make it run a bit smoother).
Yeah the Apple natively doesn't have any kind of vertical interrupt available for that. I think the mouse hardware does but it's definitely not stock on any Apple II. :-(
The 6809 was such a superior processor to the 6502! I enjoyed programming assembly language on my Color Computer 3 a lot, not that I really did anything useful.
@@Starchface The CoCo 3 was my first home computer. Loved that thing. I did so much with it.
@@Starchface It definitely was but Motorola wouldn't license it as loosely as the MOS 6502 had been so it never reached the same level of success. Look at the Atari Lynx released in 1989. It has a 6502 because Motorola wouldn't grant a similar license to Epyx/Atari Corp offering customization of the 6809 - and the 68000 too for that matter - as was available for the 6502 from the start.
This is indeed a very interesting machine, and I'm not sure I would have rather had this over my Apple IIe back in the day.
That speed issue reminds of the days with my first PC, a 80286 machine. It had a turbo switch, to switch between I believe 4.77 MHz and 16MHz. The 4.77MHz mode was for speed compatibility with older Intel systems. I remember the game digdug was unplayable in 16Mhz mode because it ran too fast. Putting the machine in 4.77MHz mode made the game run just fine.
Yeah those initial games didn't even think that we would have faster PCs one day :-)
I'd be surprised if those early games haven't been patched by enthusiasts in recent years...
so much fun and much to learn with Adrian..👌🤟
Gotta wonder how well the AppleWorks spreadsheet works at 3+ MHz. I recall building some sheets which took a while to run on a stock Apple //e (decades ago, of course). The higher speed would've been really nice.
WRT copying floppies, might wanna try running the Laser at a higher clock rate. The Apple //e had difficulty running terminal programs. It worked just fine when everything fit on the screen but, when the screen had to scroll, it was not uncommon to lose the first couple characters because scrolling the screen ate several milliseconds and the Apple Serial Card had 1 byte of buffering, meaning multiple characters were sent before the terminal program could check the port.
I discovered this while trying to use an Apple //e as a terminal connected to an Osborne O1 (52 column screen, physically painful keyboard). I could run at 300 baud (but who wants to do that) without issue but 1200 baud lost characters when the screen scrolled.
I have no experience with a //c so I can't speak to how well those worked. The fact that you could copy floppies at 115,200 on the //c means they likely had more hardware buffering on the serial ports.
I believe you are right about Total Replay slowing the system down for games, as it normally does this on IIGS computers.
Just a minor clarification but on the IBM PC and compatibles, games written for AT and later PC and compatibles check the CPU and adjust their speed but not games written for the IBM 5150 or XT (or compatibles wit the same CPU) as they just assumed the clock speed was 4.77 MHz as that was the only CPU speed option at the time on those machines. That is why latter PC compatible machines include the misnamed Turbo button, which contrary to its name does not speed up the machine when pushed but rather slows it down to 4.77 MHz so older games assuming the speed will run at the correct speed. I’m sure the namer of the turbo button might argue that Turbo mode is on default on those machines so pushing the button deactivates the mode thus the button is not misnamed but I’d argue it’s still confusing in that case regardless.
Even more confusing, while most turbo buttons slowed it down when pushed in, a minority of them were the other way around, slow until you push it in. In which case they’re more in line with the name and thus in some ways less confusing, but since the operation is opposite on most machines as you say, that makes it more confusing overall because people don’t expect pushing it in to make it faster.
40:46 Part three? I am going to pause on this series until all parts are released.
i miss my laser 128, had one as a kid, wish i could find one close to me.
the other computer was jealous and the cover fell out of spite and anger because you were paying too much attention to the laser hahaha, it was like "that's not even a real apple!!" hahahaha.
I was thinking the same thing. It felt bad when he started playing with the 128. But when he opened up the real Apple II and took a card out of it to put in the 128? "That sir, is taking it too far!" LOL
28:00 - That's the most OG Zaphod Beeblebrox thing you've ever said. :D
On my Atari 8-bit with SDriveMax, I can use it with a 1050 disk drive and copy files and disks back and forth.
Around the 9.00 mark I thought you were doing a dance party! Joke aside, when you used Dazzler Draw in the highest speed I notice it wasn't doing the flood fills correctly, it was not filling some area's. Anyway, another fun video even though I'm not a huge Apple fan..Paul..
Use a colon to refer to a time stamp like this 9:00.
@@sittingstill3578 Whilst I agree I should have used a colon I find your reply a bit confrontational..I don't think the mistake needed that tone..Relax...
@@Mclaneinc I was just trying to help. I enjoy finding time stamps in comments so I can see what others have enjoyed. As a result I try to clarify how this works for folks for the enjoyment of everyone. Thanks for sharing the reference!
It could be due to the way some games were coded an exception is generated, like for instance a divide by zero error.
Could also happen due to hardware, memory not keeping up, but then dazzledraw should lock up too.
Can’t wait for part 3!
@23:06 IF it really is ABS, use Nitro, put one drop of Nitro on the crack of either piece, wait 15 to 20 seconds. It will soften up the surface and let you glue it together without introducing foreign chemical substances. Works perfectly on lego and derivates.
The IIc has a timer-the mouse card. Nobody used it to detect the speed of the system though. Likewise the IIgs has timer hardware that can be used. Older machines … it might be possible using some trickery, but nobody did that either.
I love the floppy disk noises.
The story behind the 5 1/4" drive being driven almost entirely through software that Woz wrote is essentially correct, but there is a lot of interesting stuff to the story. It's worth looking up the whole story, but briefly, the reason it's mostly driven through software is because when Apple went to Shugart back in the day for disk drives, their drives had a controller chip and was a total package, but was very expensive. Something like 2-3x the cost of a bare drive. Apple balked, so Shugart gave them some bare drives to test, thinking Apple would get frustrated without the controller chips and come back to Shugart and pay the price for the full package. That gambit failed, as Apple had Woz, who simply (for him) read through the schematics and wrote routines to drive the drive through software, and I'm talking from the bare metal. He had to create an encoding scheme of the bits, and as there was no track 0 sensor due to not having those controller chips, he simply sent 40 "minus 1 track" commands upon start up, which is why it does that "Grrrrr-dt-dt-dt-dt-dt" upon power up. Shugart was shocked when Apple came back and put in a large order for the bare drives. Never doubt The Woz. Wiki has an account of some of this at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_II but it's worth looking up Woz's recollections too.
Actually the Laser 128 EX has a COMPLETELY different but compatible disk controller in slot 7. It's known as a UDC (Universal Disc Controller). VTech sold it as an add in card for the //e.
Still have my Laser 128ex,also have the expansion slot box unit,with 3.5 disk and adaptor card
You have the absolute best intro. I always find myself doing a little dance with the music. Keep up the good work!
There was an Applied Engineering Z-80 1 Megabyte card I had for the Apple IIc that was mounted internally. Lots of bank switched memory and when using assembly language.
Superglue and baking soda maybe?
That is a nice clean break, just not sure about the plastic compatibility.
23:00 I can't speak to it myself, but I've heard other people mention plastic revitalizers/rejuvinators/conditioners that help with old, brittle plastic like this to help restore some of their elasticity to that they don't just snap apart like that. The comments I've seen say that it works in a lot of cases. What exactly the product is that you use, I can't say for sure, but Google will likely point you in the right direction.
The joystick doesn't work with the faster clocks because the "A/D" conversion is done by using an oscillator (I believe it's a 556) where the variable resistance changes the timing: the internal routines measure the time in cycles, and for this reason the measures for the joystick will be completely off.
This episode just reminds me how much Apple was getting it's rear end kicked by Amiga.
Amiga Really did run the roost until PC came along and after that Apple just took it's place.
Though I personally think we should have a third platform like Amiga back instead of Linux.
Listen, I don't hate Linux but the fracturing of that is so wide that it becomes hard to know
certain things and what you want to choose and what runs what. An Amiga return would be a
great thing in my opinion.
Linux is not really fractured. You pick the distribution that you like and almost everything will be compatible. The distribution's native package management generally takes care of installing whatever is needed to make an application work. From a user perspective the differences between distributions boils down to two things: the details of the initial installation process, and the provided package management system. The vast majority of software applications are compatible with any of the mainstream distributions. Maintenance and updates are automatic and generally much smoother than anything Microsoft can do.
@@Starchface Like I said I don't hate Linux but there are too many distos and not enough people know what you just said. The same can be said for an Amiga comeback but at least with that there are far fewer options. I just don't see a Linux type of computer. A hardware software combo that touches people like the standard windows and macs have.
Yes, windows have a standard. Usually an Amd or Intel cpu with Nvidia or Amd Gpu and windows os. There isn't much variation there anymore. Macs well we know them. I just want to see an alternative that isn't Linux. I love Amiga and have passion for that and would love to see that brought forward.
@@valentine_puppy The thing that made PCs boring was the very thing that made them a success. They have no "personality" because the operating system and user environment is in software, and the hardware interface is an open standard. PCs typically were minimally equipped and could keep costs down.
Commodore and others initially tried to compete with the IBM standard, but ultimately failed due to closed architectures and the costs of having to implement a lot of hardware that on IBM, users could just buy as needed.
That said, I remember well the excitement of sitting down at an Apple ][ or a C64 or a TI99 as a kid and thinking, what can I do with this thing? I will never forget those days. It was a Golden Age.
Ahhhh lovely artifact colors!
Adrian- to fix that, try Jet Glue. I've used it on C-64's and it works great. My daughter is a dancer, and she uses it on her shoes. I broke a tab off my breadbin and decided to try it, and it works!!
Thanks for the tip
I had this machine when I was young, but I don't remember having any software issues with the faster speeds. I do remember having trouble running a few games we bought. We had this disk called "Vegas games" but one of the games (I believe it was the 2nd game on the menu) would crash no matter what we did.
Even if the Laser didn't have the IWM chip for the disk drive, it still might work with the 6502 running at warp speed!
Try cpm after adding the additional ram. The B version must have been sysgened for more memory.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING - plastic weld is a liquid polystyrene plastic glue used by fine scale modelers. It actually melts the plastic together and is a little tricky to use. You apply it so that capillarity (surface tension) draws the liquid into the crack. It bonds nearly instantly so must be done carefully. You can find it at hobby shops. If done right you will not even know that broken piece was missing.
Should have mentioned - that type of glue is always applied from the INSIDE so that it doesn't mar the exterior finish. I used this stuff on my models and the results were both incredibly strong and very nice to look at. I'm sure this stuff is acetone-based and will work on just about any brittle plastic.
If the lid from the ][e is ABS plastic, you can weld that back together with a drop of acetone.
We had Laser128 with CP/M and Turbo Pascal in my high school computer lab.
I had a separate metal assembly that plugged into the expansion port that'd fit two Apple IIe form factor cards, so the port might have some stuff to support that. Sadly, all that was thrown away years ago...
Could be a soft boot issue too. I think there where cases where certain memory addresses would get "corrupted" if you did certain things, and you literally had to either a) shut down, and restart the machine, or use a program to "set" those addresses back to the correct values for the expanded memory to work right again.
Also - PC games could only adjust within certain limits. Really old games literally "couldn't" tell how to react to a processor that was far too fast for it. Basically, anything made for the original PCs, or a 286, if you ran it on something like a Pentium, *would* run into problems with speed, and there where actually utilities that used system interrupts to attempt to insert clock cycles (often badly), to "adjust" the speed such old games ran at. So, PC games *did* have the same problem, but later games where smarter.
You said in first video they were selling card adapter that made posible connect two cards into that side connector(for extra 50 bucks or so). Maybe thats why is slot 5 not working, as that expansion card has most likely own controller, setting one to slot 5 and second to slot 7.
We had those expansion bays in our middle school, they were pretty simple. I don't think they even had any extra chips inside, just wiring to make one slot appear as 5 and the other as 7. The Apple II expansion slots use a bus configuration to connect with the rest of the machine, which means a lot of the pins are shared between all the slots, while certain pins were used to identify specific slots.
@@evknucklehead Hm. Im assuming this machine has to diversify between two cards that could be potentionaly used and need to know which one it wants talk to. It cant use both of them at same time, so there has to be way to tell one to "shut up, im talking to other one". I guess its pin 1 and 34 on machine's connector? It leads to pin 1 on slot 5 and 7 connector...whatever it is(they are marked as SC5XX and SC7XX).
It means you could make your own adapter easilly. From schematics, theres just simple power circuit thats... kind of weird. Why it needs external 10V if it can take 12V directly from machine. For diode and +5V?
I let Adrian to brainstorm it, i have no clue how those Apples works.
@@cyphi474 I think it was a design choice so they wouldn't have to include a larger power supply in the Laser 128 itself. The machines were already quite cramped inside with all those expansion options built-in, and it was already much heavier and about twice as thick as the IIc. Also, in those days, the 12v rail wasn't nearly as important as it is in today's PSU's, so designers didn't make much current available on that line.
As for selecting the active slot, if I remember correctly, the Address lines on the bus were used for this purpose, with each slot having a specific range of addresses associated with it. This is similar to how PCs do things even today, with a major difference being how those addresses are allocated. On the Apple II series and its clones (and a lot of other 8-bit computers) these addresses are built into the hardware itself, while modern PCs can assign those addresses as needed.
@@evknucklehead So you could use both cards at same time? Because otherwise it doesnt give much sense. There is enough current for one card.
@@cyphi474 Both slots would be populated, but only one could ever be active at a given instant. The CPU can easily switch back and forth between slots as it performs its tasks, though, so it may seem like both are always active, even though in that instant they are not.
Yes, the address is $C030. Through an address decoder and some glue logic, it triggers the “T” input of a toggle flip-flop, where one of the outputs is connected to the speaker through a current-limiting resistor. The other end of the speaker wire is grounded. A similar thing happens if you read $C010, but that toggles the tape (cassette) output instead. Or maybe it’s $C020, I forget. It stands to reason that most, if not all, games for the Apple ][ series work only at the 1 MHz speed; they would probably be unplayable at the higher speeds, especially at the higher difficulty settings. And some might not work at all due to copy protection, or just because the routines for the Disk ][ drives wouldn’t work at the higher speed. It’d be interesting to find out which programs will ir will jot work at the higher speeds.
You actually can make a floppy disk for a IIc from source on the Floppy Emu. I've done it with both ProDOS and choplifter. You should maybe look into that again... You need to have the Floppy Emu internally connected if I recall...
You are right, the 40/80 col card on a IIc does practically nothing. As far as the 3.5 disk drive, on the IIc there are 4 rom revisions. On the later rom revisions (0,3,4) they have the hardware to handle smartport drives and the original rom revision (255) does not.
Thats a really neat looking computer!
I had a Laser 128 as my first machine, my father worked for a company that sold them. Every school in my area used them as well since they were significantly cheaper than the Apple IIe and IIc. The laser 128 is a IIe clone (rom wise) in a IIc style case. The one advantage the IIc has is it's keyboard is significantly better.
Regarding the side card slot, I had an external expansion chassis that plugged into the slot so your cards would be covered and protected. You can find them on ebay from time to time.
@@MrCodyswanson Did VTech actually sell the expansion chassis or was that 3rd Party hardware? I was just thinking about that. TI sold an expansion chassis for the TI-99 4A in its latter days. Atari designed the 1090 for the XL line for the very same reason but never released it.
@@TheJeremyHolloway the one I have is metal and branded vtech.
High speed mode will be awesome for Shadowkeep!
Ok so lets review... a) the higher clock rate (level 3) on the Laser 128EX corrupts a drive at 39:50; also making games unstable and sound is messed up; b) then at 4:15 contrary to the Apple you need to turn off the machine so it can read 80 column mode or it hangs if you switch from one to the other (or use both as in Dazzle Draw); c) and at a point you had to use the actual Apple IIc for a task at 36:52... also the problem you had with the RAM disk never got resolved.
hmmm. Is this really proving the Laser 128EX is better?
Don't get me wrong there seems to be plenty of interesting little fine tunes - but when you actually have the software and don't need to reformat or change your drives each time this machine seems much more buggy, unstable and less user-friendly than the actual machine... as is the case with most clones.
I had an Apple //e and that same 3.5” external disk drive, and they worked together. 🤷♂️
Same here.
Great videos and what a lovely machine! Perhaps the only good Laser computer.
Can't the software detect video sync? If so, that would be a 60Hz timing source. Console video games are timed that way, so I wouldn't be surprised if some Apple games were programmed like that also.
That's why you gotta put stuff back together even if it's not screwed down and put stuff away until you need it again.. What a shame that nice computer case got broke because of that .
Awesome video, especially that you're willing to risk sacrificing working hardware to test compatibility.
23:00 - if the ABS plastic welding is not an option, maybe you could try CA glue+baking soda. Look it up, it gives a lot of structural strenght and you can use it on surfaces that are not visible.
So I was looking at bit more at the tab -- sadly that specific broken part is what clamps onto the lower section of the case, so it needs to fit perfectly over this ridge in the lower section. Meaning when I glue it, it cannot have any glue "oozing" from the crack, even on the underside. I think the ABS welding is going to be my only option.... I would normally try to reinforce it with some extra ABS but unless I do it on the OUTSIDE it won't be possible. What a pain!!
@@adriansdigitalbasement Ohh, I see, that's bad news. Good luck on fixing it! By the way, did you find the CA glue+baking soda trick? It might be useful in the future. Cheers!
God I love those names they put in a cracked disk. I have one disk that says it was Ripped by Jack the Ripper. LOL
I guess a programmer knew anyone who saw the message "CAN'T FIND STUPID CARD" was already having a bad day and needed some cheering up.
I am a fan of the AppleIIc, so this is very interesting stuff! How was the Laser perceived at the time? With disdain by “real” Apple users? or a legit option? Given the significantly lower price, would Apple fans buy a Laser as a back-up?
The problem with running the CPU faster with games is that it just runs the slow game faster. Like if a game is 3 frames per second and you increase the machine's speed by 3 times, it doesn't run at 9fps in the sense that would be useful. It will still fun at 3fps, just with shorter seconds. It's hard to explain what I mean, but it is very easy to see when you actually do it. It just runs slowly, only faster if that makes sense.
I used to have a Laser 128ex back in the 80's, but sold it when I upgraded to an Apple IIgs. The 128ex was a good computer (and cheap, compared to Apple), but while it was good it was not 100% compatible. To keep things legal the ROM had to be reversed engineered, not an exact copy. The expansion slot was rather quirky as well, and to get it to work at all I had to buy the expansion box which supported two slots. Again, it was not 100% compatible and certain expansion cards would not work.
That special card for the 3.5" drive is called a Super Drive. You can buy a new version of it from Reactive Micro for a couple hundred bucks.
thank you for that cpm error! made my day!
cant find the stupid card!
...the feeling when when your pc cant use a smartcard OR a stupid card...
The zx spectrum had some tricks even with the missing timer: im2 interrupts (generated with raster 50 times /second), or floating bus. Did not had something similar on the Apple 2?
It's really curious for me since I had the Macintosh back then (128k), and that computer had very crappy games in comparison.
On //e and later machines, you can poll I/O location $C019 to tell when the display's in vertical-blanking, intended to help with flicker-free screen updates, but this could also be used to calibrate a timing loop for different CPU speeds by counting elapsed cycles per 60Hz field. Also, when a mouse interface "card" is present (including inbuilt ones in the //c, //GS, and Laser 128*) it can be set to trigger an actual Vsync interrupt, though the mouse firmware uses this itself, so you'd want to set the vector back after calibrating to avoid breaking that. As far as I know, no games used either method, maybe because early Apples (II, II+) didn't support it, and accelerators were uncommon, especially early in the life of the platform.
CANT FIND STUPID CARD. When that popped up in his screen that was hilarious! 😂
In //c, the switch won't affect programs. As you mention Laser build the ROM by themselves not copy Apple's, there may be slightly different.
Cool video. I have two. They work great. Thank you
What is that card called that has an SD card reader on the side? I'm interested in getting one for my Laser 128 base model. Although, the floppy drive works just fine and I don't have a notch to make a side 2 of the diskettes. Also, was there an adapter that allows you to plug in an Apple mouse and a joystick at the same time or not really? It's also amazing that you can boot from an 800KB 3.5" drive, FloppyEmu, and that card that was on the side.
🤘😁🤘 Lucky you having such beautiful machine. I wanted to buy it but in Europe it's quite challening to get it. Sometimes it's available on ebay in USA but importing it would cost a fortune... :(
3:09 - The width is wrong too (note that the left robot's wheels are out-of-round)