Apple IIc and Z-Ram Ultra 2

[fimbulvetr]

I picked up an Apple IIc this week with a monitor, external 3.25 floppy, mouse, a fist-full of disks, and all the original paperwork, as the price was too good to pass up on.  Up to now my only experience with Apple computers are Macintosh and newer, so there is a bit of a learning curve with figuring out the IIc.  Of course, one of the first things I did was open it up where I found a Z-Ram Ultra 2 card.  At any rate, the computer appears to be functional, although I am getting some flaky behaviour, and I am not sure if that is due to corrupt 20-year old disks or something else.  

It came with a couple sets of AppleWorks disks.  The most worn one was marked as being modified for the Z-Ram card. If I boot off that disk, the computer says it is starting a clock program, then halts to a screen full of gibberish. If I run the unmodified AppleWorks disks, the computer seems to run fine, but does not access the extra memory on the Z-Ram. Another thing that I have noticed is that soft  reset (control-open apple-reset) does not reboot the computer. At best, it kicks me out to the command prompt. At worst, the occasional screen full of gibberish.  

From what I can see, the z-ram card requires some special software to work. Does anyone know where this could be found? Also, I am assuming the clock battery on the card is well past its best-by date. Anyone change one of those before?

Thanks!

 

[NJRoadfan]

What version of AppleWorks is it? If I recall, later versions have the appropriate support for RAM cards built in, but 2.x needs to be patched. All my Applied Engineering memory products with Appleworks support have come with a disk called "AE AW3 Expander" to patch and add support for their cards. Disk images are readily available online.

https://archive.org/details/aw3.expander

 

[fimbulvetr]

I know I have AppleWorks 2.0, and I think there is also a copy of 1.1. I don't have any of the Applied Engineering disks, so I guess I will need to dig up some images of that.  Do you know which versions of AppleWorks are compatible with ram cards?

 

[NJRoadfan]

I would stick with 2.0 or 2.1, AE's documentation states compatibility with it. Its also period correct as 2.1 is the version that came with my Apple IIc back in the day.

 

[Elfen]

ProDOS and AppleWorks 1.1 should work without the ZRAM.

It is already installed? It might be loose on the board if it is installed. Taking apart those Apple IIc's can be a royal pain as well.

in the minimum, does ProDOS load up?

 

[fimbulvetr]

Yeah, the z-ram card is installed.  I don't have a ProDOS disk, but the utilities disk loads up and will let me exit to dos.  If I understand the label correctly, that is ProDOS based.  Many of the program disks I have work, which makes me wonder if the problems I am seeing are due to disk corruption or hardware issues.  Some only sort of work -- for example, I have a word processor program that behaves weirdly (e.g., types letters instead of numbers when you hit number keys, while at the command prompt and in other programs things are fine)

How hard is it to remove the z-ram board?  I took a look at it last night with thoughts of re-seating it, but pulling it made me a bit nervous as it is in there pretty solidly. 

 

[Elfen]

The Z-RAM Card should be on a Internal Mac Like Floppy connector at the bottom of RAM (near the outside edge under the keyboard). It should be removable quire easily but pulling up on it. Unless somebody glued it in place. That would be strange but I seen it done.

I think that the disk head (only 1) is dirty and needs demagnetizing. If it can read and boot, there is no problem with the hardware electronics it self.

There's two switches next to the apple logo above the keyboard. 1 is for the 80 column card. It should be pressed down before turning it on. When you break out into DOS, type "PR#3" [ENTER] and it should get you into 80 column mode.

The second switch is for keyboard type: QWERTY or DVORK. Make sure it is up for QWERTY.

 

[fimbulvetr]

Thanks! Reseating the card seems to have done the trick. Everything is working great! Now I just have to figure out how to replace the clock battery . . .

 

[Elfen]

How's your soldering skills? If it is a Clock Chip, which is essentially a couple of batteries inside a large plastic box its going to be a job to replace. Speak to Falen5 about it as he has replaced one of those chip on a PC laptop he posted here on the forum some where.

Edit: Found the link:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/25364-another-pram-problem/&do=findComment&comment=267889

 

[fimbulvetr]

Mine has a big plastic box that looks like this, but with the printing scrapped off:

http://www.tnrbattery.com/55615-703-012-3-v-150h-3-6v-varta-mempac-battery/

They are still available for about $12, so it looks like that will be a good route to go.

 

[Elfen]

It's been a while, any luck with this?

 

[fimbulvetr]

Yeah, I got the new battery off eBay and replaced it. Works great now!