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Franklin 1000 system restoration

Verault

Well-known member
So someone brought me a Franklin 1000 in a very sad state to have repaired. Seems they connected up the keyboard cable backwards and did some damage. They did add new foam capacitive pads first but never got the chance to test them.



The long and short of it is I needed to replace a couple diodes and capacitors on the keyboard PCB as well as some TTL logic. The keyboard decoder IC was also bad. IT was impressive the damage caused by connecting a cable backwards considering the cables had no connector or key; its easy to put in wrong!

Once I made those repairs I still had lots of problems. I suspected the Eprom on the keyboard PCB was bad. I finally found someone with a Franklin 1000 to dump the ROM and I was able to test it in the machine. The keyboard was now working again! I had to adjust a bunch of the foam pads but the keyboard works again. Phew.....



Anyway I dont own a Franklin and have no real experience with them besides this repair. My question is are there any Diagnostics from Franklin to run on this system? I know its an Apple II plus clone so do you just run Apple II plus diagnostics on it? Are there any disk images meant for the Franklin PC series? Specifically the 1000 or 1200 series? Hope some of you know a bit more about these system.
 
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Verault

Well-known member
Noone has any info on the Franklin huh? Shame, I find the clones pretty interesting..

Anyway, I tried all the disks I could find labeled FRanklin or ACE and only two work: Both on Asimov

franklin ace dos.zip and ACE-1000.dsk

Both Are DOS disks and both have a Diagnostics program you need to BRUN within them. Just a heads up for anyone in the future. It can test the RAM, ROM, and CPU which is handly. I found PC Cillin II works also but thats it for Diags. Apple II plus diagnostics DOES NOT WORK on the Franklin 1000.



Something to note unlike the Apple II and II plus which goes up to 48KB MAX. The Franklin Ace 1000 has 64KB on the board in 16kb chips in 4 rows.
 
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