Skate finds a iigs

[Skate323k137]

Spotted a nice iigs on Craigslist recently. The guy with it was the 2nd owner, who got it from a teacher. The teacher had purchased it through the educator buy from apple in the late 80's and took amazing care of it. Everything was in such good shape I felt almost speechless when I got home and unpacked it.

I've had a ton of fun running off floppies with my SE and trying out games the last couple days.

The bundle in the copier paper box was the most surprising. All the software and such was well kept, with a ton of photocopied manuals and old apple II software in a stack of folders. Oregon trail with the instructors guide, number munchers, etc.

Everything in good working order except the monitor is very dim. I whipped up a scart cable to use it with my 27" NEC in the mean time, and I'll recap the original monitor in due time. 















Using my powermac with Bernie to make floppy images. That floppy drive needs cleaning so I attached the iigs drive to my SE, and made the floppies with that. 

Eventually I may take a spare powermac and try to use appletalk to share a volume. In the mean time I find using a 2mb ram disk (it came with a 4M ram card) lets me load the OS and a game to it for most cases, and that's good enough for me until I find/settle on a CF or floppyemu solution.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The last hardware run for the CFFA3000 is for sale right now. I'd grab one sooner rather then later.

 

[tanaquil]

That is a beautiful haul, especially considering how expensive IIgs machines seem to be these days. 

 

[Skate323k137]

Thanks guys! I've really been enjoying this one. 

CFFA looks awesome, but I grabbed a reactivemicro dual CF when they were on sale for 75 dollars a few days ago. Since I have multiple options for getting files to the iigs I can get by without the USB. 

I may still grab a floppyemu to have around, but I'm glad I found the CF solution for internal storage as that performance is much better.

 

[CC_333]

*sigh* I don't think I'll be able to afford this before this batch runs out.

Do these ever come up used?

I don't know if I'll ever need one, but I do have a II+, a IIe and a IIgs, so I have machines to put it in.

c

 

[Skate323k137]

The CFFA seems to be done in batches... Like NJroadfan said, now is the time for that one.

On the other hand the reactivemicro seems to be readily available. We'll see how long it takes to get mine. While it doesn't have USB like the CFFA has, it has DMA for fast speed. 

 

[Gorgonops]

on sale for 75 dollars a few days ago

Drat! I wish I'd caught that.

Sigh. So I just gave in and bought one for $95 anyway. Having it will once and for all eliminate the need to fret about it.
 

I whipped up a scart cable to use it with my 27" NEC in the mean time

Man, that's handy that you had a TV with a SCART connection, they are rare as hen's teeth in the US. Is it actually an arcade monitor or the like?

 

[Skate323k137]

My NEC is a BNC input monitor similar to a PVM. I use a scart to bnc cable to actually connect. 

Definitely a rare tube. I got lucky and saved it from Michigan States recycling bin. 

 

[Gorgonops]

I got rid of all my CRT monitors with BNC cables years ago. They were all 19-21" Multisync computer monitors, I wonder now if any of them would have been able to lock onto NTSC frequency input... oh well. They were huge, a 27" is real monster!

 

[Skate323k137]

It's a beast. Almost 100 lbs, but it's 15 and 24khz, so it's great for pre VGA/31K stuff. I have used it as an arcade monitor before but I usually use it for light gun console games. It's really a luxury to play saturn and ps1 gun games in RGB. 

I'm really impressed with the iigs video quality in RGB. Here's a random cut screen in "The Tines"

 

[olePigeon]

Is that a NEO•GEO cab?

 

[Skate323k137]

Yeah, that's my 2 slot Neo Geo MVS

It is admittedly a converted cab, but a well done one. 

 

[Skate323k137]

ReActive Micro card is legit. It's basically ram disk fast with DMA enabled. My IIGS cold boots in like 20 seconds lol.

I ended up also getting a floppyemu. While the internal CF drive is great for storage and actual iigs files, some programs (read, copy protected games) are happier running from a floppy or emulated floppy. For ones that don't have to run from a floppy, I have all the disk images on a large HFS partition, and a few prodos partitions where I can just restore the disk images to. I use a disk copy app to restore the .2mg to a prodos partition. When the software in the disk image is OK with it, I can reboot to the reimaged disk, and it's lightning fast to load compared with the same app on a floppy or the floppyemu.

For a hard drive solution there's no comparison though, floppyemu is very slow for every day use. Still a great product, especially if your main goal is easy access to some games, but if storage is your goal, and speed is a concern, go the CF route.

 

[Gorgonops]

My card came in this Friday, but I haven't had a chance to give it a whirl yet. I hope it is indeed "legit".

Particularly want to poke around with this on it:

http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/time-out-for-some-8-bit-fun-iigs-style/

 

[Skate323k137]

That stuff should work just fine. A lot of it is preloaded on there already.

Hold open apple on boot and you can use a number to pick what volume to boot. The default is just prodos but partition 2 has a set up gsos install on it. 

I just timed a reboot, 27 seconds for gsos 6.0.4. Lighter weight stuff boots in a flash. 

 

[Skate323k137]

Started a recap of the original monitor. Done with the neck board, still have to do the main pcb and reassemble / calibrate. 

Anyone know what the service switch is for on the neck pcb?

 

[Skate323k137]

Got this monitor as good as I think I can get it.  This IIgs was clearly loved and used for a lot of hours, despite how clean it is. The tube is definitely high hours; I dialed it in "cold" and this was a huge mistake. I should know better than to adjust a monitor that hasn't been running for an hour or two, but sometimes you can get away with it when the caps are all fresh. In this case... I could not. Once it got to full temp it was way over bright, so after I ran it for an hour I had to completely readjust the screen/focus on the flyback as well as some cutoffs. 

The end result, given the age and the fact that being $TIME on affects brightness, was that I had to dial it in to be just usably bright for the first few minutes it's on. Once it's warmed up, it looks pretty darn good for a 30 year old tiny tube. 

My only complaint is that this monitor model has virtually no ventilation by design. I may have to look into adding a small fan at some point. It really gets warm after a couple hours.

Anyway, here are the pics I managed to snap along the way. 

 

[CC_333]

That display looks *really* good!

Seeing what it's capable of makes me want one even more (I've been looking for one for quite a few years now; I have a IIgs to pair it with if/when I eventually do get one).

I think I'll concentrate on getting another IBM 5153 monitor though, first.

c

 

[Byrd]

Yeah, looks great!  Did you replace most/all of the caps inside - did it improve picture quality/brightness in doing so?

The 12" RGB is a great monitor to own if you're into other 15khz output Amiga/Atari systems of the same age, I'm going to make up the cable one day on mine to get it working on those too.  

JB