An IBM PC card for ex-Apple II owners 🍎 AST I/O Plus II
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- Testing several 8-bit ISA expansion cards I found at the thrift store, including one which was designed to allow people switching from an Apple II to an IBM PC to keep using some of their Apple peripherals.
#vintage #pc #apple
Having the ability to switch between DTE and DCE on the card with the Apple II joystick connectors makes sense. Apple serial cards also usually had the ability to switch between DTE and DCE to eliminate the need for null modem adapters and since serial printers were common and if I recall correctly they were also DTE configured, the ability to configure the computer as DCE makes sense.
To remember the difference between DTE and DCE, remember DTE is Data Terminal Equipment such as your computer or terminal. The DCE is the Data Communications Equipment, usually a modem.
I recall when watching the video, I thought, "I used to know what those meant." Even though I'm always playing with old computers I'm also always forgetting specifics like this if I'm not using them regularly.
@@devikwolf Bah I'm so oold I use to know what they meant as tose retro computers were the new-fangled hot items when I used them
Dte and dce, that was something I learned for a test... Never knew I would ever see that I real equipment.
@@MrSpacelyy Heh. It's basically just about the kind of equipment you're hooking up and how you want to use it.
Neat find. I'm not familiar with this product, or the AST product it was based on.
Your video gave a perfect example of why IBM put extra slots in the 5160. IIRC, the case included punch outs for extra I/O ports.
Nice finds. Growing up with computers like the Timex/Sinclair 1000, Commodore 64, and Amiga 500 that were silent except when actively loading, hearing computers with internal fans and serious hard disks was both awesome and ominous.
I worked for a small computer store when I was a teenager. Magitronic parts were our bread and butter. I probably built a couple hundred of their dirt cheap clones.
My pride and joy of a DOS rig is a Magitronic system
My understanding is that the "bubbly" copper strip is not a defect; it came out of the shop like that. It is uneven thick solder plating to increase current carrying capacity.
It's an artifact of the wave-soldering machines of the time. Pefectly normal.
I have a Commodore 64 where replacing some of the RAM was a massive pain because of the thick solder covering the ground PCB trace. A proper rework desoldering gun probably does a lot better job on those than a desoldering braid does. I get a pit in my stomach now any time I see that on a board.
@@dennisp.2147 Well, it's an artifact of solder mask over tinned copper, which allowed molten solder to wick under the soldermask. This is why we use SMOBC, solder mask over bare copper, which prevents this.
A lucky find VWestLife👍
I made quite the find myself recently. I'm now the owner of a Thurstmaster official top gun joystick
Those cards with the M logo were made by Magitronic, or were originally from a Magitronic PC (hence their signature M logo sticker even on non-Magitronic made boards)
I have a Magitronic 486 desktop and almost all of its add-on cards had Magitronic branding. I also have a Pentium laptop from them.
Since the original company is no more since 1999, and their trademark expired in 2008, I’ve actually began the process of registering the trademark so I can use it with add-on cards and retrofit parts for vintage computers
Yep, I think the person who donated those cards probably parted out a Magitronic 8086 or 286 desktop they may have found. (Edit: probably a 286 or 386 judging by the settings on the third-party diskette drive controller card)
I'm reminded of 'Datamini' and 'White BOX', both of which were local computer companies where I live that had gone defunct some time in the 2000s.
Man, I haven't seen a Magitronic logo in an age. I had all sorts of things from them.
It's entirely possible that they had unbranded clone cards made, of hardware by other manufacturers, so they could slap their own sticker on them.
That graphics card looks like a GeForce2 Ultra. Hell of a find considering what they go for on eBay!
At first it reminded me of a RIVA TNT 2 which I had way back in 2001 on an HP OEM.
The sad thing is that a few years ago they went for a couple of quid. Now the vintage computing market is stupid money.
@@cromulence Collector Tax will get you every time!
The board says NV886.0 so this is an AGP GeForce 2 Ultra.
Dang, I wish I had thrift stores like these close by. Some of these cards would be great for some of the weird builds I like to do on occasion. Like, who wouldn't want 4+ floppy drives in their computer?
VWestlife: finds cool, weird expansion cards at the local thrift
LGR: finds an IBM PC-XT at Goodwill
My local thrift stores: "Sorry, we only have terrible keyboards, and multifunction printers"
I shop at literally the exact same thrift store he goes to, and let me tell you, that is NOT a common find there. They do have some real gems every now an then though. I've found some really interesting vintage electronics including what might be the very first electronic game. It's the type where you put a card with questions and answers over the metal pegs, and you connect wires to try matching the correct answer. The only flaw with it is there's no actual logic in it whatsoever. If you memorize where the wires go you will always get everything right lol.
@@devikwolf I can't even watch thrifting videos. I just start seeing red.
I believe Magitronic was a house brand of a midsized computer parts distributor called Liuski International, which sold a full line of parts including monitors, keyboards, expansion cards, laptops and so forth to mom and pop computer shops in the late 80s to mid 90s (at least).
It's all very poorly documented, though, as one would expect from an outfit that feels so fly by night. Still, I had some pretty good stuff from them, including the bulk of an Am386-40 desktop back in the day.
Magitronic used to be an independent company (founded in 1985) before its acquisition by Liuski International in the early 90s. The company went out of business by 2000, but had exited the PC market around 1998-1999.
With the resurgence of the retro PC movement, I saw it as a golden opportunity to resurrect the brand.
Finding every PC and laptop they built will be difficult but I hope to have a database of drivers for the configurations they offered
3:34 the logo is for Magitronic. I had one of their turbo XTs back in the day 🙂 great video!
Always love seeing that old IBM opened up.
I love the fast bootup times of NVMe drives, but I gotta say I really miss the sounds of that thing booting up. The whine of the hard drive, the floppy checks, the dot matrix printer, all sounds that bring back memories.
That AGP card at the end looks like it might be a GeForce 2, with the placement of the RAM and the green heatsink. I have a couple of cards very similar in my inventory.
The only thing I can think of why they had the joystick ports is that Apple encouraged people to experiment with their Apple IIs and build IO interfaces that operated through the joystick ports. (In fact, later Apple IIs re-used some of the hardware for controlling the DGHR graphics mode and the caps lock key.) So if you had say, created a hardware interface that communicated through the joystick pins to the Apple II, you could port the software to IBM PC XTs. However, I can only imagine using such a computer to run hardware experiments -- The A][s weren't cheap in their day!
When I saw all those cards I remembered how much extra it used to cost to have them all in your computer at once.
There would've been a point when finding these cards at a thrift store would've been rather uneventful, how times have changed and how expensive basic ISA cards have gotten.
It's interesting to see that someone made a Apple ][ card for the PC platform even if it's not a hardware emulator on a expansion card like the Apple Macintosh Apple II board that was basically the GS Apple II e chipset and The ports for Apple II hardware. That board was aimed at schools who invested in the II platform to entice them to upgrade to Macintosh while still being able to use the software they bought for the II. It actually functioned like the DOS compatibility card later sold as a PC compatibility card it ran a parasitic second computer on the Board that shared the Video and input devices of the Mac even sharing ram.
Each one of those IBM cards probably cost hundreds of dollars back in the early 80s. Probably an average week's wage for 1 card. I was earning about $300 a week before taxes, when a Mac or an IBM PC (basic model) cost around $4000. So you can imagine only businesses and people who could afford it bought those things. Taking out a loan to finance the purchase of a computer was not a wise decision then, as by the time you paid it off, it would have already been obsolete and almost useless. And looking at these cards, which now seem primitive, but were then cutting edge technology and commanding top dollar, can you imagine the billions of dollars that these companies made, even if they later closed down? Breathtaking.
The technology didn't change as quickly back then. A system held its value longer.
@@Caseytify Yeah, the humble ol' XT class hung around for quite a while, and people were still using them when I got a 386DX -- which we bought new while it was a contemporary platform, about 5 years after its initial release. Things picked up with the 2nd-gen Pentiums (75MHz, late 94), which doubled in speed a little over a year later (150MHz, beginning of 96), and then again a little over a year after that (300MHz PII, mid 97.)
I regret getting rid of my old PC stuff when upgrading over the years - I miss the sounds the hardware made!
I like how they sold them as "Furniture", I guess they thought someone might use them as wall art or something... :P
Wow what a good find again. Last time i seen something like this was at a goodwill. It was a ethernet card one was in box other one was an empty box with just the software disc. At a different Goodwill store I did find hardware but I didn't pick it up sometimes it's a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't situation when I don't pick up something such as a high 8 Handycam I did see in a Goodwill it was going for half price I should have grabbed it came with the battery the bag tapes charger Etc I kick myself for not getting them. Seeing that dot matrix printer it's a sight to see especially for a trucking company that I work for that's all they use at most of the terminals which is 90% they use. Matrix printers to print out all the bills for all the palletize loads on the trailers. It's a common Sight and Sound that you hear when they're printing out your paperwork I heard from 1 dispatcher that they have used them since the 1970s I've seen them in the office during very big printers they are at least three and a half feet tall and about three and a half feet wide to print out the bills for the trailer to print out the paperwork for the Manifest that is on a regular that Matrix printer that is on a stand.
I haven't heard the name IDE in about a decade.
I wish I still had my PowerMac G4 Mirror Drive Doors from 2002.
I wanted to put a GeForce 4Ti in it, max out the RAM to 2GB, and install 10.5 Leopard on it.
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
Does it even matter if you have a use for each card, what really matters is researching & testing these cards. Anytime i get the chance to open up my Retro Rigs & test stuff, that's a great day!
You have much better thrift stores than I have ever seen.
The bubbling happens because the traces are fully tinned, then the solder mask is applied, and when the components are later wave soldered the tin under the solder mask resoftens.
My thrift stores never have any pc stuff sadly, id love any pc older than the pentium 3 machine i have lol
That HDIR is delightfully colorful. I need to remember that.
Funny I just saw the computer chronicles shareware episode where they demo hotdir
It depends on the thrift store. I usually get almost nothing interesting at Goodwill, but the local Savers usually has much more interesting stuff.
I liked the video and Happy St Patrick's day Vwestlife!!!
Nice a new video love old Windows/mac parts have a nice week
If you need any tech support for that AST card I’m sure you can call the 8-bit Guy
I was just going to say that!
I have that exact battery tester, but mine is green and is a different brand. Best battery tester I've ever owned.
the most impressionable thing about the IBM PC is that it had a whoping motherboard with a zillion chips and yet still required a flotilla of massiveively populated expansion cards to handle every little i/o chore. Just no motherboard integration to speak of at all. And even with a jaw dropping 8 expansion slots users still ran short on slots - so much so that IBM introduced an external expansion bus to sit next its behemonth desktop case. From the vantage point of computing modenity, where a tiny credit card single board computer can implement everything about that original PC, it is a kind of retro computing culture shock. Massive motherboard, tons of full length expansion cards all to do what can be done on a tiny credit card size modern computing device
To be fair, compare it to any other 16-bit computer from the early 1980s with similar capabilities and their circuitry will be equally as large or even larger. For example, the Zenith Z-100 series, NEC APC, Tandy 2000, etc.
@@vwestlife Yep, and that wasn't an accident, either. There was a focus on repairability and experimentation. But the clones focused on price, and consolidation definitely made them smaller and cheaper.
DTE stands for Data Terminal Equipment, and DCE stands for Data Communications Equipment. The difference is the positions of the transmit and receive lines on the RS-232 connector. Normally, you would connect a DTE to a DCE, and the transmit line of one would connect to the receive line of the other (and vice-versa), with a straight-through cable. If you needed to connect DTE to DTE or DCE to DCE, then you needed a "null modem" cable or adapter, which simply swapped the transmit and receive lines so that the devices could communicate.
The DCE/DTE thing is basically describing what end of the equipment it was acting as.
DTE is basically your computer .. Data Terminal Equipment.
DCE was Data Communications Equipment .. basically the thing being controlled or talked to.
So DCE is things like a modem, terminal server, the console serial port on a Cisco router.
Back in that day, the only time I ever really dealt with it was on configuring CSU/DSU connections out of a T1 for data access, or in some of the more esoteric RS422 configurations.
10:15 - am I the only one who now wants to hear audiobooks read out by VWestlife? ;-)
DCE and DTE is indeed about the pin layout. DTE stands for data terminal equipment, ie, the computer or terminal side. DCE stands for data communications equipment, typically a modem, but can also be a serial port on a server intended for connecting a terminal. If one side of a serial connection uses DTE pinout, and the other side DCE pinout, you can use a 'straight' cable. DTE to DTE or DCE to DCE requires a null modem cable.
3:31 The logo is upside down, it's a Whataburger card. 😂
I found a nice 80GB IDE HDD the other day. Gonna use it to build a Pentium system. (Probably Win 98b)
3:33 - that m stands for Magitronic. That’s the company who made it for sure.
Although they did sell standalone add-on cards, they were more common pre-installed on Magitronic PCs
@@ct1660 correct
3:27 looks like the Whataburger logo upside down.
Ironically the Magitronic logo is meant to resemble sine waves / square waves.
@@ct1660 the moral of the story is: do not look at that logo when hungry.
@@netoe funny i posted while at Whataburger
The M is Magitronic. It looks like it has a bios on it to allow booting from the high density drives. It's a great piece of upgradeware. Except for the AST card, it's the find of this lot.
Magitronic? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. I didn't even recognize it at first. :O
I have a Magitronic 486 with a dead CMOS battery buried *somewhere* inside. It's stuck in a BIOS check loop until I can find it.
Look for a Dallas DS1287 chip. Those have a built-in battery that was supposed to last for 10 years. Unfortunately some motherboard came with it soldered on!
@@devikwolf Beware when trying to replace the Dallas chip, that most of the ones on eBay are old stock, and therefore no better than what's on your board. There are aftermarket chips from the vintage community that replace them. They take a standard coin cell, which is far more future-proof than either the original chip or dremeling out the original chip and trying to slap a coin cell holder onto the chip Which is what we had to do in the "olden days" ten years ago.
@@vwestlife I was hunting for that Dallas chip, I've seen plenty of them in the past but I couldn't find one in this machine. But I also stopped short of a full motherboard removal -- it's probably hidden somewhere extremely inconvenient. The chassis is extremely unfriendly to disassemble, as well.
My intent is, if it is a Dallas chip with the internal battery, to replace it with one of the modern coin cell options instead! But first I gotta find it, and that includes figuring out how to open this thing without damaging it, when there's no info online for it!
@@dennisp.2147 That's the plan! It's because of this channel and others like it that I know about these great retro replacements :)
Cool find
This brings back memories!
My local thrift store just has grandma's old tea cups and junky clock radios from the 90s....maybe a pile of old cables and tv remotes at best.
3:30 I believe that logo is Magitronic
Nice ST225 by the way
It's the most reliable hard drive I own. It hasn't been formatted since 1998 and still has zero bad sectors!
I have a multi meter like that I've always liked the sears branded tools
I once found a voodoo at a thrift store :)
I’ve also found a voodoo doll at a thrift store
Whataburger should sue the M company. It's an upside down Whataburger W 🤣
the geforce2(??) has the code on the board about which board it is. it's kinda hard to read on the video.
OHhh that dual floppy disk drive controller has a one time programmable Option ROM on it, since it says 2764 I'm pretty sure its an 8K sized PROM. You might wanna back that up
Why?
I have the AST IO Plus II. You select DTE or DCE based on whether you want to act as a terminal connection or communications device. Found no real use for the change from DTE. I can use a null cable if I want to connect to another DTE.
If you want to use the Apple joysticks, the IC needs to be in U1 and the cables supplied with the IC plugged into J5 and J6 or U1 uninstalled for IBM Joysticks. If you leave the IC in, the IBM joysticks won't work.
Pretty sure that CA card is "Computer Associates" I had an under-monitor surge bar by them with the same logo
"with that it mind, I came up with THIS"
The blue "M" is Magitronic.
1:15 That's not how it works. The transistor architecture as well as possible protection diodes dictate ESD robustness. Early CMOS technology without protection diodes was exceedingly vulnerable against static discharge.
all the thrift store around me all they have is 90% close
You found that at a thift store? We be lucky to find that on Craigslist for like $600 dollars claiming it's 'like new condition'.
3:06 1989? I wonder why Commodore kept only supporting DD as a standard for the Amiga line until the end. I think the Amiga 4000 came with an HD drive but the chipset wasn't upgraded so it ran at half speed.
To be fair, Amiga's double-density disk format was 880K, versus 720K for PCs (and Atari STs) and 800K for Macs.
@@vwestlife It's still nearly just half of even a DOS HD floppy disk. An Amiga-formatted HD disk is 1760K.
Amigas used their Paula sound chips for low-level disk I/O (data separation, finding syncwords, DMA'ing raw track data to/from memory). Paula was the only custom chip that never got upgraded in ECS or AGA, likely for cost reasons, hence the data-rate limitation. I can't remember if AA/AAA would have included an upgraded Paula, but Commodore imploded before those chips ever went into production. Paula would dump an entire track at once to memory, as raw MFM bytes, after which the graphics bit-blitter inside Agnus/Agnes would decode them, relieving the 68k of this task, but using the blitter made if flexible enough to handle GCR as well as MFM (so, reading 800k Mac disks was possible, but I think only the outer 300k or so - due to lack of variable-speed spindle motors on Amiga drives, inner tracks would come in at too fast a bit rate for Paula to sync to).
I'm not sure quite how much Paula logic was shared between its audio & disk duties. I've seen demos play sound while loading from disk, but is it possible to generate audio while *writing* to a floppy? Clocks were probably derived from the video timing, which would mean the floppy driver having to take note of whether it's running on an NTSC or PAL machine.
@@jordanhazen7761 Seems like it would have included an upgraded Paula, the Wikipedia article talks about a Paula replacement called Mary that would double the amount of audio channels, so it would likely support HD disks as well.
3:20 Why are there Whataburger stickers on there? 😆
I saw the blue stick and had to double check. But yea the answers below is correct. Does that Oki have the IBM roms in it?
Interesting
Great video!
You may know this, but wd40 is great to rejuvenate that ribbon. Don't overdue it.
I used to use it on my Tandy DMP130, my Panasonic kxp, and I still use it on some very expensive okidata forms printers at work still in 2022!
Thanks, but I already have a new ribbon for it. I just haven't installed it yet.
@@vwestlife they dry up weather you use them or not. This protip will help you when that happens. ;)
the nVidia Graphics card is either a Geforce 2 TI or, if you're lucky, a GF2 ULTRA.
Not bad. But the TV Out is mostly useless...
In the early 2000s.the addition of TV Out was to support using PCs as video recorder/streaming devices. At the time, you could buy video capture and TV tuner cards with the supporting software to create the ultimate home media player/recorder with your PC.
@@dougbrowning82 I am aware and actually used the TV Out at the time. Even on nVidia Cards.
The Problem with nVidia TV Outs at the time is that you do NOT have any options to set Overscan, so the Picture is only 50-75% of the screen, i you'relucky. Thats why I said its mostly useless.
And the necessary "TV Tool" for nVidia Cards is probably no longer obtainable.
@@Stefan_Payne I've discovered if you set the desktop resolution to 720x480 the overscan goes away and you get perfect output, at least on my FX Go 5200.
@@eDoc2020 Well, here is the Problem:
the GF4 MX and FX and later had internal TV Encoder. Those were usable and nVidia had IIRC an option in the Drivers.
That wasn't the case on the nVidia Chips with External TV Encoders (usually: Brooktree/Conexant or Philips), there you have a Digital Option:
On/Off
Thats all you can set in the drivers...
Some ELSA, later maybe ASUS Driver might also have allowed that, but they were months behind...
@@Stefan_Payne I seem to think I have an NVIDIA card older than the GF2 MX but on further thought I don't. My TNT2 has the footprints for a video connector but it isn't populated.
You find this stuff in your thrift stores over there?
#jealous
That Nvidia card has a AGP interface.
What is this thrift store you always shop at? I'd love to go there.
Where can The Troubleshooter software be downloaded? I had it on floppy back in the day, but my floppy is lost (or maybe it went bad and I discarded it). Now that I could use it, I can't seem to find it online.. but I see it in this video.
Here you go: www.amstereo.org/files/ts.zip
@@vwestlife Excellent, thank you! I appreciate it!
I paid $199 for my first 2400 baud modem for my Mac Plus.
14:10 you forgot to mention it is y2k compatible
AST that's the 8bit guy he does a video on working for them
Unfortunately this product is a good bit before my time working there. I think in my 3 years there I only ever fielded 2 or 3 calls related to the six-pack card, which was very obsolete by that point. And I don't recall ever dealing with this one at all. We did receive some minimal training on the 6-pack cards when I started, just in case anyone called about them, though.
Geforce 2 GTS or Geforce 3 maybe ?
There's a typo in the document @ 10:00.
I didn't write it.
I recently found a 48.8 modem at Goodwill for the bargain price of just $25! :(
Do you mean 28.8K? There was no such thing as 48.8. The speeds went from 28.8, to 33.6, to "56" K, even though the FCC limited the actual maximum speed to 53K.
@@vwestlife Yes, I absolutely meant 28.8, my bad!
Did the 20G IDE hard-drive live?
I hope you didnt manage to break it while tossing it arouns on the table (am sorry, english, I heard it failing down)
BTW: why do you get interference when you move the joystick?
It's fine. And that's not interference, it's CGA "snow".
@@vwestlife thanks, so whats the diference between interference and CGA snow then?
@16:08 - "Drug Fair" - I have been to a few of them....what, what?
The name of a former drug store (pharmacy) chain here in NJ.
I knew you were into old bags
Pls review ibm5100 if Possible
talk to "the 8-bit guy" hear on youtube, he used to for at AST
@8:44 Das Boot?
Would you be willing to sell the nvidia card?
Send me an e-mail via the link on the About page of my channel.
take off...
nvidia geforce 3