I am glad to announce another multi-functioning accelerator for APPLE II.
It could provide a good capability on APPLE II system with faster BASIC speed, better memory and DHGR acceleration.
I spent some months to design and testing it and now want to receive orders from international buyers.
In fact, some month ago I already completed design and sold it several cards for local friends.
but, It took long time for international customers. I don't have much good eyes now and then every month feel a little different and this card has very small parts and hard to make by hand. New card developing is hard for me.
Spending time and ideas on the new card.. is not just developing... it is exploring the APPLE II system.
When I built new devices, i really wanted to make them different than presents others. I want to assign unique characteristics for my card and then there could be some special functions with it. When I considered new features into my products, it doesn't complete easy, always brings other technical issues. Maybe I still don't understand some of WOZ machine properly....
I don't know how long could I design and make cards for friends....
I had rest some weeks and feel much better now.. so you can give me order to make yours now.
The A2 OverDrive has several funny functions. One is Digital output.. and we can play WAV songs with it (Of cause, It need a DA converter)
High speed acceleration doesn't give other than the speed... But, It bring the possibility for your APPLE II. Faster running software will make other possibility for a real-time-based games.. On the graphics, it could provide smoother faster more object can move at one time period. But, all software functions... not hard ware additions.. at least still now the accelerator card was as this.
For A2 OverDrive have hardware special functions.
1) interrupt generator It provide IRQ or NMI interval timer interrupt. user can define the timing of interrupt. Hope to be used for multi processing and for event processing.
2)Slot memory Sold memory area $C100-C7FF which are reserved for ROM on SLOT peripherals. A2 Overdrive has ability to override this area to own RAM location. Hence the area can use for User's area ROM or RAM. Also $C800-CFF0 area also can override it to own RAM. It is one of my philosophy that if technically possible then try to make new&fun functions.
3) Digital I/O Many of people wouldn't use it except sound module function to play the WAV (sampling) sound. I provide it for H/W fun. 8bits Input and 16bit output.
Other small functions such as fixed interval reader, R/W memory speed adjust etc... Some are provided setup value due to limitation on APPLE II to co-operate it but, others are for special functions those couldn't find other accelerators.
I'm making the English manual for this card and some are completed but, when you order and receive the card, you can have proper manual.
Other information are scattered on this site. just consider it as an hide and seek game.
Please order this card for an engineer who want to make more fun devices for APPLE II.
• MAX 16Mhz accelerator card for Apple //e and Some revision of APPLE ][+ are works
• Integrated Memory emulation of Saturn (64KB) and RAMWORKS (384KB)
• Two 8bits Digital Output ports
• One 8bits Digital Input port
• Integrated programmable Interrupts generator
• Additional Virtual SLOT RAM on $C100-$CFFE
Acceleration
• A2 OverDrive 65C02 CPU works up to 16Mhz
• Accelerate Main and AUX area
– Accelerates ROM ($D000-$FFFF) and Hi-RAM($D000-$FFFF)
– Accelerates Saturn 64KB and RAMWORSK 384KB
– Accelerates BASIC programs
– Accelerates DHGR and DGR programs
• CPU speed can set to 16Mhz, 7.16Mhz, 3.58Mhz and 1Mhz
*** Parts shortage(Parts price is too expensive now)
I think we are really experiencing serious problems.
I'm using CPLD for this card and the parts price became 4 times.
And I can't make it with the price so, I stop selling it.
But, If you are still interested, please ask me for the price.
Sorry for this.
** Shipping issues
Due to Covid19, only some country covered with the standard shipping costs for shipping.
Please refer to the below and please ask for the shipping costs if your country is not in the list.
In this case, I have to send the package with EMS or for the UPS (Higher costs).
Sorry for it.
Standard Shipping only
USA GERMANY UNITED KINGDOM LUXEMBOURG ITALY RUSSIAN FEDERATION MALAYSIA VIETNAM CHINA CANADA THAILAND TAIWAN BRAZIL SPAIN SINGAPORE FRANCE CANADA PHILIPPINES HONG KONG(CHINA) BHUTAN SANMARINO ALBANIA GB JAPAN
It's up to what I've been working on recently. The biggest change in this version is the player used as far as the hardware supports it. It support a progressive bar (level meta). It is very tight to support this in the 1Mhz APPLE II. It was made using even the hardware timer and interrupt supported by the SD MIDI II card. It is quite difficult to support it. After a lot of trial and error, I finally decided to use a timer interrupt for simultaneous processing.
For reference, these progressive bars are the 16 channels of MIDI, from 0 to 15 from the top. It seems that it is too difficult to handle this with interrupts in Apple2. It's so hard that I don't want to bother you anymore.
It works fine with or without an accelerator card but, If you use an accelerator card, the CPU load is reduced, so the tempo of the sound can come out a little more naturally. This is because the load on the interrupt side is large.
Since you have to use PRODOS, you can't completely push the IRQ routine away, so this is the best what I can do. If I increase the speed of the progressive bar quickly, the CPU load increases, so this is the last choice.
- MIDI file format 0 is supported. Other formats can be played smoothly by converting them to MIDI 0. - There is no MIDI file size limit. However, if the file is large, a slight delay may occur. This is sometimes canceled by the internal timer when a delay occurs, but in some cases, it cannot be canceled and may exist as a sound delay.
It isn't a freeware sorry bout it but, I will provide SD MIDI][+ customers for free.
SD DISKII Plus emulate two FDD or two HDD and It has a good Menu drived image selector.
On HDD emulation, SD DISKII Plus work as block devices and supprt two 32MB HDD emulation. It doesn't accept smartport function call internally.
I have some reports about non working HDD image(800k). And I found that those are using smartport MLI without checked the type of device.
Boot ROM already indicated as a non smartport device but, Smartport call happed on some program without check type of device and failed to access on some HDD images.
Anyway, I decided to support Smartport call on SD DISKII Plus. I'm learning for smartport fuction calls.
It have to both on ROMBIOS and Firmware on SD DISKII Plus. It would take some time please wait for new BIOS.
Unfortunatelly, It might to be updated ROM chip. It require a ROM writer to update with new code.
New ROMBIOS and firmware would be annouced when It finished.
What will be change? 1) Smartcall program(image) will work properly. 2) More HDD drives can use now it has two HDD but, more atleast 4. 3) More block size accepted max 8G.
