Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:41:34 -0800
From: Scott Quinn <compoobah at valleyimplants.com>
Subject: Re: Older Apple Macintosh books, manuals, Apple 2e card.
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
The Apple // cards (I think it was a //e) fit in the
LC PDS (LC, LCII,
LCIII, not sure about the '040 LCs) and are a genuine Apple product
that was pretty much 100%. While most of the (usually schools) using
them would move their Apple // software to either 3.5" or hard disk, I
think that Apple made a Macintosh-compatible 5.25" floppy that would
read Apple // disks (I know they made an IBM 5.25"-compatible floppy
drive for Macintosh back in the late 1980s), but not many were sold.
The IIe card has an actual IIe-in-a-chip on board. It plugs into an LC
slot. The "LC-slot" originated on the Mac LC, but was instantiated on
many Mac models after that.
The rule to distinguish 68040 based machines with an LC slot is that 68040
machines which can boot into 24 bit addressing mode will support the IIe
card and 68040 machines which cannot boot into 24 bit addressing mode
(IOW, 32 bit only) cannot support the IIe card, even though it will plug
into the LC slot. IIRC, the Quadra 605/LC605/P605 supports the IIe card
and the Quadra 630 family (Q630, 631, 635, 636, 640, and LC and Performas
with same numbers) does not.
Most machines with an LC style expansion slot have no other expansion
slots, so installation of a IIe card precludes adding an ethernet card and
other expansions. The Q63x family has a comm slot and an LC slot, so one
could have an ethernet card in the comm slot and a IIe board in the LC
slot, if they supported the IIe, which they don't. Grrrrr.
The IIe card has a connector on the back plane for a custom cable. The
custom cable splits into a joystick connector and a floppy drive
connector. So one can connect a IIe joystick to the IIe card and one can
also connect a 5.25" floppy drive to the connector on the special cable.
IIRC, there is a model(s) of 5.25" drive which will work and another
(others?) which will not, but I don't rememember which is which. Still,
one does not need a special 5.25" drive. The connector is for one of the
external 5.25" drives which was supported on the original Mac IIe.
The IIe card uses the host machine's keyboard, mouse, display, hard drive
and built-in 3.5" floppy drive.
A IIe expansion card enthusiast has a very informative website up on the
topic. And I will be useless here and fail to have the URL. But the
resource exists and covers the information above to a useful level of
detail.
Jeff Walther