I’m heading out to visit James Littlejohn next Saturday (09/06). He lives south of me in Chelsea, Oklahoma; approximately 175 miles away, or around two and half hours drive time. I’m delivering some Apple II and robotic gear to him plus we’re going to do a little hardware hacking. It should be a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to it.
James is going to help me overclock a couple of my IIc Plus motherboards. He’s confident we can achieve 10MHz but I’ll be happy if they make it to 8MHz. He may also give me a sneak-peek at the internal battery pack and LCD panel he’s working with to make his IIc Plus TRULY portable.
I’m hoping Glenn Jones can pull off the //cmxp project, and then we can combine it with all the nifty upgrades Littlejohn is working on. Just imagine what an awesome Apple IIc Plus that would make. A fast 10MHz CPU, 1MB RAM, ProDOS clock, compact flash storage, color LCD, battery (maybe even a network adapter)… it would be 8-bit Apple II nerdvana.
We’re also installing the new Little Expander Plus (LEP) into my workhorse Apple //e. I’m planning to evaluate it and post a review on A2Central. Of course, I’ll take pictures of the whole process.
The LEP is something I’ve personally been looking forward to for a long time. One of the reasons why I love the Apple II so much is due in no small part to it’s legendary expansion slots. Occasionally, that love turns to frustration because I have several cards I like to use frequently, but never enough slots to install them in at the same time.
Anyone else in this predicament probably does one of the following; swap-out cards as needed (causing wear and tear on slots and card connectors) or keep specialized machines (which take up a lot of space) that are optimized for certain functions. I do the latter — I have separate machines that have peripheral cards installed for gaming, music, productivity and utility work.
Take slot 4 for example. In some of my Apple II machines, that slot is either allocated to a 1MB “slinky” RAM card, a mouse card, Mockingboard or a WildCard II. It’s seldom that I need to use more than one of those cards at the same time, so the logical answer is some kind of switch that I can use to select the appropriate card just prior to bootup. I figure I’ll be able to downsize and put two or three machines into storage, saving room in my office.
I’m pleased to say I had a small (very small) part in making the LEP a reality; I came up with the idea of integrating the LittlePower ATX adapter into a clone of the SCRG Switch-a-Slot for an all internal four slot expansion device. Littlejohn did all the hard work (design and testing), and was nice enough to have my name silk-screened on the LEP. Finally, my name immortalized somewhere… but in a good way. ?
When I get back, I’ll post pictures and an update about the trip.