was: National Semi... is Apple ][ collectability (if any)

[Eric Smith]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 9:03 PM, drlegendre . <drlegendre at gmail.com> wrote:

> Add some RAM, maybe a DISC-II card and those things overheated even +with+
> the vents.. that's why the Cider fan became popular, among other things.
>

My Apple II+ had no fan, but never overheated. I heard a lot of people talk
about needing a fan, but had no idea why.

For much of its life my Apple II+ contained:
0:  language card (16KB DRAM)
1:  parallel printer card
2:  super serial card
3:  Videx 80-column card
4:  Microsoft Z-80 softcard
5:  homemade HP-IL interface card using HP 1LB3 chip
6:  Disk II controller
7:  Sorrento Valley 8-inch floppy disk controller
and a Videx Keyboard Enhancer II (6502-based replacement for the Apple
keyboard encoder, to add lower case, macros, etc.)

The only times I had any unreliability were when one DRAM chip went bad,
and when the firmware EPROM (2708) on the Videx card went bad.

At other points in time it contained
* Corvus hard disk interface
* Apple Profile hard disk interface
* Video Associate Labs VB3 microkeyer (large board in slot 7, cabled to an
even larger board over the power supply)

If anything was going to make it overheat, I would have bet on the VB3.