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IIgs gurus? Mobo question

Posted by: unity on 2013-12-22 17:18:49 I owned a few Apple ][ computers and used a IIgs often in school as a teacher's aid but I know next to nothing about them. Tonight I had the itch to fire a IIgs up and discovered I had two of them. Throwing caution to the wind I hooked one up without examination and fired it up. It worked on first boot. Even the dodgy looking floppy drive worked. Keep in mind this lot had been stored in my parents basement for over 10 years! Cool! But now the question. On the second unit I decided to open it up. The case has rust damage and flakes of stuff were rattling around. There was no way I was going to test this one without cleaning! Every the curious, I compared motherboards. They are the same older revisions (not ROM 3). Both are the same part numbers as far as I can tell. But why does one have a keyboard and keypad socket soldered to the motherboard? The other does not. When I Googled, briefly, I found no others with soldered on ports. They appear factory installed. Also resister 121 (large one, lower right) is installed as well as some small sub-board. So... is this normal or some odd freak/upgrade I should be aware of. My only concern, really, is frying an external floppy drive, etc.

Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2013-12-22 20:57:40 The boards with the keyboard port were originally for IIe-to-IIgs upgrade kits. The board mod is something I have never seen before.Info here: http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/Csa2HDWHACK.html#012

Posted by: unity on 2013-12-22 21:00:36 Cool. Thanks much for the education. Now to see if this one will power up.

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