On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 20:21, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
It's rare that I find a unique and interesting
computer these days. This
Mitac LIC-2001A Little Intelligent Computer is one such. Apparently, it
was marketed in Japan because it has the Katakana (I think) character set
painted onto the keycap fronts, but otherwise is a standard QWERTY
keyboard layout.
The back connectors include:
1) Power
2) Joystick (a 16-pin DIP socket mounted on its side!)
3) Tape In
4) Tape Out
5) TV (the jack of an RF modulator)
6) Expansion
7) Drive 1
8) Drive 2
9) Printer
10) Monitor (RCA type jack)
11) 80 Column (RCA type jack)
Now, as I typed this, I started to sense something familiar, especially
when I took into account the pin count on the disk drive connectors, and
especially with the joystick port. I do believe this is an Apple ][+
clone. I opened it up and it has a 6502 and a Z80 onboard, with three
ROMs and lots of RAM chips, sort of like many ][+ clones I've seen (I have
at least a couple or three other ][+ clones with 6502 and Z80 on-board).
I just can't verify this by booting it up because it has a very funky
power connector which requires an external power supply of some sort
(which I didn't get with this).
Anyone ever heard of this? The web turns up empty.
It is indeed an Apple II clone. I have pics of one on my website,
including the power supply. That's a great find. I'd love to get my
hands on one of those. What other clones do you have, Sellam? Perhaps we
should discuss a trade of some kind. Yes?
E.