Apple II Mystery (to me) Card

[macinbot]

What is this card used for?

This interface card came from the Apple IIe I picked up awhile back.

Installed in slot #3

16 pin (2x8) male header on card. 16 pin female to female cable was connected.

No model or manufacturer other than “SCS-A1 0.788” on the back.

Cable has “I-34 19” written in marker. Probably for internal (came from a school) use.

 

[bigmessowires]

There's no ROM, so the software needed for this card would have to come from somewhere else. The chips are a couple of 8-bit registers, a shift register, a mux, an 8-bit latch, and OR and NAND and NOT gates. I think slot 3 was often used for 80 column cards or mouse cards, but I don't recognize this.

 

[Skate323k137]

As BMOW said, no ROM on board makes it difficult to identify; we can't even dump a chip for a clue unfortunately.

It will likely be quite difficult to ever figure out what it was without whatever was on the other end of that cable (or some software). Could be an 8 Bit IO that controls anything at this point.

I hope you figure it out though, I love playing Apple II Mystery Theatre.

 

[bigmessowires]

I count six power pins and eight I/O pins, leaving two pins unused unless I missed something. The presence of a shift register is a strong clue this is some type of serial I/O card. Since it was installed in slot 3, I'm going to guess it might be an interface card for a PC-style serial mouse, but I don't know why it has a ribbon cable. Maybe the DB-9 connector for the mouse was mounted on a separate faceplate, and the ribbon cable connected the card to the faceplate.

 

[Skate323k137]

I count six power pins and eight I/O pins, leaving two pins unused unless I missed something. The presence of a shift register is a strong clue this is some type of serial I/O card. Since it was installed in slot 3, I'm going to guess it might be an interface card for a PC-style serial mouse, but I don't know why it has a ribbon cable. Maybe the DB-9 connector for the mouse was mounted on a separate faceplate, and the ribbon cable connected the card to the faceplate.

I like the theory for sure, but mouse cards I have and have seen are more complicated, apple ones as well as this aftermarket card which I think describes your potential use case.

MacEffects bitMOUSE Serial Mouse Card for the Apple II

MacEffects is proud to introduce its new bitMOUSE card for the Apple II, II Plus, IIe and IIgs. This card allows you to use standard PC Serial mice (DB9) with your Apple II which are plentiful and can be found in transparent cases to match your clear Apple IIe! This mouse features switchable...

maceffects.com

 

[bigmessowires]

You could reverse-engineer the entire schematic from those photos, maybe that would give more clues. Of the eight (?) I/O signals, I count four connected to the low four output bits on the '259 latch, one connected to an output from the '04 inverter, and three connected to inputs on the '153 mux. So if I'm reading this right, whatever that card connects to, it's a peripheral with five inputs and three outputs, where the inputs can only be read one at a time through a mux. That doesn't sound like a mouse.

 

[Arbee]

It can't be a mouse card, or at least not one that will work with any standard Apple II software. Those are required to have very specific firmware entry points and this has no firmware (mice are slot 4 by convention also). Chip date codes are in the 1987/88 range, so the "0.788" is possibly a July 1988 manufacture date.

 

[waynestewart]

I'm guessing some kind of networking card from a school. Finding the card in slot 3 may be misleading. People pull out cards and put them back in the wrong slot. On ebay I've see Disk II cards in slot 3.

 

[macinbot]

Thinking about when I picked this computer up earlier this year, and I remembered that there was a commercially produced floppy with the box of blanks the former owner gave me.

The title is from HRM Software for the program “Sound”. When booted, it looks for an interface called “Redbox”.

The card is currently out of the IIe, so I’ll need to experiment with slot placement to see if having it in any particular slot changes the message screen.