Interesting IIc Find

[Elfen]

Just opened up both my IIc's thinking that I would have a 256K RAM Upgrade in one of them. The cleaner (and older) of the two (little case yellowing on it) was just a plain 128K IIc with no memory expansion slot. 

The other was like the first - only 5000 away from the first as far as the serial number is concerned, no Ram Upgrade Slot in it. But 64K of the on board RAM was on sockets, the other was not. This I found strange. But stranger - It has a RocketChip 5MHz 6502 Accelerator in it! But this machine has been open so many times that it no longer has the original screws and two are missing.

I have to say that this is an interesting find. Zip Technologies (maker of the ZipChip) sued Bits & Pieces Technologies (maker of the RocketChip) so manufacture of the RocketChip ended suddenly and ZipChip became the predominant Apple II Accelerator though the RocketChip was the faster of the two.

Most of the Apple II stuff I learned from Dr. Levinson (RIP). But I do not know much about this accelerator.

As soon as I find a few things like a power pack to turn it on and a monitor to display it, I'll state my results.

Here's to happy findings!

 

[dorkbert]

The word on the vine was that Rocketchip had a few bugs. though I've personally never encountered them.

 

[Elfen]

When Dr. Levinson was alive, he wanted power for his Apple IIs, and got all the accelerators he could find including a TransWarp 8, Transwarp GS and RocketChip 10. There were also a few odds ones I never saw elsewhere out of his possession; a couple of Chinese ones as well.

I've heard of such bugs but seeing the doctor put an Apple through it's paces, a IIc at 10MHz was a sight to see. I never seen these bugs! I've put them into Commodores and Atari's, too bad it did not work. Part of the Apple ROM is in these chips, or so we believed at the time. So it was incompatible.

One we were doing was putting a 8/16bit 6502 into an Apple II. Not the chip used in the IIgs, but the one below it that was not used. We almost had a 16MHz Apple II screaming. It kept on crashing and we could not figure out why. Somebody out there made such an accelerator later on.

Where can I get software (if any) and documentation for the RocketChip 5MHz?

 

[Elfen]

Both Apple IIc's turn on, disk drive turns on and after a while shuts off - all normally as it should. Even the one with the RocketChip,  even though the beep was normal. In some accelerated Apple I heard the beep at a higher tone meaning that the Apple was running at the faster speed. Not true in this case, so it must be off.

 

[AichEss]

Elfen, the first two versions of the IIc are 4000 model numbers. Neither has the logic board RAM board slot. Versions 3 & 4 are 4100 model numbers and both have the RAM slot.

 

[Elfen]

AichEss, yes, they are A2S4000 models. Serial number on the "older one" is D440DH6, and the serial number with the RocketChip is D490TLC or about 50000 away from the other.

Both do turn one though I only have one Apple IIc Power Brick.

 

[olePigeon]

My accelerated Apple IIe makes a higher pitched beep, though I believe Applied Engineering made documents available for writing software to be Accelerator Aware.  Ultima V, for example, does that.  The play of the game is accelerated, but the music and sound affects aren't.  It's pretty cool.

 

[Elfen]

I remember that Applied Engineering Accelerator, Dr. Levinson  had it (along with many others), it was quite a card!

I managed to get the RocketChip Manual off archive.org. The site was totally redone, so links are screwy - many download links that are https:// does not work, but changing them to http:// will work as in this case.

The RocketChip is off according to the manual, but if I turn it on, it should reboot with the high pitched beep.