How Current Apple 11-Serles Owners Can Step Ufj
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How current Apple 11-serles owners can step UfJ oving up to the Iles is a But is it really a good buy? Will you board, and speaker cables from the logical next step for owners still be able to use all your old pe Ile motherboard Mof current Apple-II-series ripheral cards and software? Should • remove the base pan from the plas computers: You get a you keep your Ile and ignore the tic casing of the Ile and save the souped-up, Macintosh-like com Iles? Or is this the time to sell your speaker puter that still works with most of Ile, II Plus, or Ile system unit and • insert the Iles motherboard and your current software and peripher graduate to a genuine Iles? These the new base pan als. If you own an Apple Ile, it's pret are some of the questions I hope •reconnect the power supply, key ty obvious how you can upgrade to a you'll be able to answer after read board, and speaker cables. Iles-by purchasing an upgrade kit ing this article. The computer you end up with is from Apple that gives your old Ile Details of the Upgrade functionally no different from a real new innards. But that's only one ap The Iles upgrade kit consists of Iles-it just has a different keyboard proach to upgrading. Even if you three items: a Iles motherboard, a and a different case. Thus, you will have a Ile or a II Plus, there is still an metal base pan, and a manual that be able to take advantage of all the upgrade path for you. You can sell describes the differences between a Iles-specific software that will begin (or set aside) your old CPU, buy a Iles and a Ile. The upgrade does not to appear in 1987, notably graphics Iles system unit, and use it with include a Iles keyboard, power sup and sound applications. One caveat: your old software and peripherals. ply, or case-you must salvage these Most of this new software will prob Here we examine the whys and items from your Ile. The upgrade ably require a mouse and 3.5-inch wherefores of purchasing the offi also does not include the Iles mouse disk drives, but these are not part of cial Apple upgrade kit and describe or a disk drive. the upgrade kit. You might need to what you can and can't take along he kit's motherboard is iden budget a few hundred dollars more with you no matter which upgrade tical to the Iles motherboard for these items. path you take and no matter which Texcept that it has two addi Hardware Compatibility Apple II you're starting with. tional connectors: one for the A major factor in deciding wheth The Apple Iles upgrade kit, Ile keyboard and one for the option er to buy the Iles upgrade is wheth scheduled for release later this year, al Ile keypad. A new base pan er you can protect your existing will give the almost two million Ile (which includes the back panel) is investment in peripheral hardware. users the opportunity to transform needed because the Ile base pan In other words, will all those nifty their computers into Iles equiv does not have openings for the Iles's interface cards you've grown to alents for only $499. The upgrade is built-in port connectors. know and love still work on th. e Ap- not available to II, II Plus, or Ile According to Apple, the upgrade ple Iles? 1 owners, however, despite frequent kit must be installed by an autho Keep in mi~d that the Iles has rumors to the contrary. It simply rized Apple dealer, but the $499 several built-in I/ 0 ports, so you won't work with these computers price does not include installation won't even need some of your old because of lack of space inside the charges. Installation doesn't take cards in the first place. That's nice computer (Ile) or incompatible key long, · however, so these charges because you can conceivably recoup boards (II and II Plus). should be low-some dealers may part of the upgrade price by selling The upgrade is only half the price even do it free. Unfortunately, you your redundant peripherals to II of a. real Iles (the Iles system unit, are not allowed to keep your Ile Plus users or to Ile users who aren't keyboard, and mouse cost $999). motherboard; dealers must ship upgrading. And, if you purchased a Ile from an these back to Apple. Built into the Iles are two serial authorized Apple dealer between Installation is relatively simple interfaces, a mou~e interface, analog July 15 and September 14, 1986, you and involves the following steps: RGB and composite video ports, and can get a $100 rebate for an upgrade. •disconnect the power supply, key- a SmartPort controller for 3.5-inch to the power ifthe Iles and SIA-inch disk drives. T,he GS also ~ has an internal battery-operated clock, a music/speech synthesizer, ~ and 80-column-display circuitry. It seems pointless, therefore, to use cards that simply duplicate these functions. · ou may want to continue fl using an interface card ~ott I'\.\ Yinstead of the corre ; l\E.oi.l sponding port, howev- 1S1~1i.~ er, if the firmware on the card lets you issue useful :.s"El\"l commands that the IIGS does st..~'€. not. For example, some printer-interface cards, such as the Serial Grappler and Alphabits, contain ad- vanced screen-printing utili- ties. And most clock cards give you the time and date in a variety of formats if you use a few simple Applesoft com mands, unlike the IIGS clock. You may also want to use a card instead of a port to avoid the expense of (or the hassle of mak ing) a new cable for a printer or modem you already use. It's quite as tounding, but it seems that every time Apple releases a new computer, it dreams up· a new 1/0 connector. The serial connectors on the IIGS are 8-pin circular connectors, not the ones used on the Ile or on any pe ripheral card I've seen for the Ile or II Plus. These connectors are used on the Macintosh Plus, however. Most (but not all) Apple II pe ripheral cards that plu-g into an I/0 slot (not the Ile auxiliary connector) can work on the IIGS. The cards that definitely cannot work are multi function cards that use "phantom" slot techniques (where an 1/0 de- vice appears to be in a slot different from the slot in which the card is in INSIDE: serted), such as the Street Business The $499 Apple Ile-to Card, AST Multi-I/0, and the lles upgrade kit includes a metal base Prometheus Versacard. These types pan that has the new of cards simply can't cope with the back panel and a Iles 16-rnegabyte address range of the motherboard. The kit's 65816 microprocessor of the Iles. motherboard is Multifunction cards that don't use identical to the Iles motherboard except phantom slots, notably the RC Sys that the kit has the tems Slotbuster, can work. connectors for the Ile Generally speaking, single-func keyboard and Ile tion cards work fine on the IIcs keypad. the list includes serial and parallel printer-interface cards, internal-mo dern cards, disk-drive controllers, OUTSIDE: and memory cards compatible with You will get an Apple the Apple II Memory Expansion Iles logo to stick on Card (such as the Applied Engineer your Ile, and a manual ing RarnFactor and the AST Sprint that describes the differences between a Disk). There are exceptions, so you Iles and a Ile. should ask the manufacturer of any given card whether it will work, be fore you upgrade. Apple recommends using a fan if you install more than two expansion cards in the Iles, to avoid heat-relat ed damage to components. Apple sells an internal Iles System Fan, but it won't fit inside an upgraded Ile work either, but, again, Central Iles has no auxiliary connector. So case-use something such as the Point will make you a simple fix for you can say good-bye to 80-colurnn/ Kensington System Saver instead. a small charge. Eight-bit accelerator memory cards such as MultiRAM Two important exceptions relate cards don't work on the Iles at all, and Ram Works. Many people also to drive controllers. The interface which causes no problems, because buy RGB video adapters for these card for the Apple Profile hard the Iles already operates up to 2.8 cards that drive digital RGB color disk drive doesn't work properly on times faster than does a standard Ile. monitors. Unfortunately, the Iles the Iles-in fact, if you tried to use (Note: Applied Engineering is work generates analog RGB signals, so you it, you could lose data. Apple has ing on a 16-bit accelerator designed can't connect a digital monitor to the published a simple hardware fix to to increase the speed of the Ile s.) RGB port of the Iles. (See "The Iles solve this problem, however. Older Any card designed for the auxil Shows Its Colors," in this issue.) So versions of Central Point Software's iary connector on the Ile definitely say goodbye to your digital RGB Universal Disk Controller won't cannot work on the Iles, because the monitor, too.