jac@paul.rutgers.edu (J. A. Chandross) (05/26/89)
jim@pro-nebulous.UUCP (System Administrator) > To use lower case on a II+ you need two things. You need an enhanced video > chip and a piece of wire to modify the keyboard. There is an better way. If you look at the keyboard encoder board you'll find something that looks like a switch should be installed there, but isn't. It looks something like this: |--|\ /|--| |--| | |-\/-| | | | | |-/\-| | | | |--|/ \|--| |--| |--|\ /|--| |--| | |-\/-| | | | | |-/\-| | | | |--|/ \|--| |--| But I may have the arrows (which are really PC board traces) going in the wrong direction. All you have to do is cut the bridge between the switch poles, ie the >< traces, and install a DPDT (double pole, double throw) switch. To the left gets you uppercase only, to the right gets you upper/lower case. Note that in U/L mode you don't get certain keys (like [, @, etc) which aren't on the keyboard, but are entered using Shift-Key (like shift P for an @ sign) instead of a normal Key. (I have likely screwed up the shit-P for "@" stuff since I've had a non-apple upper/lower case keyboard on my II+ for years.) A glance at the II+ encoder schematic will confirm that this enables lower case to the keyboard encoder chip. And the mod works. I've done it on several Apples myself, and sent instructions to a great many people over the years. Apple made the keyboard upper-case only because the II was not supposed to compete with the Apple III. The III had the Upper/lower case keyboard, video, 80 columns, 128K RAM, Real operating system, etc. The II was supposed to be the hobby machine, and the III the business machine. But they were too cheap to do a rev on the encoder board. So the hobbyists (that's you, loyal reader) just hacked up the board. Boy did Apple ever blow it. But it isn't the first time...... > If you can't find a video chip e-mail me and I can get you one for $25. 25 bucks? Surely you jest. I've been making these for years for the cost of a 2716 (about 3 bucks). I could see 3 bucks for your time and 2 bucks to mail it, for a total of 8, but 25 is a little high. > One other thing is that unless the software recognises the video chip and is > configured for the shift key mod, none of this will work. Since it is impossible for the software to detect a video chip, I suspect you meant that the software has to be *configured* for a video chip. Jonathan A. Chandross Internet: jac@paul.rutgers.edu UUCP: rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!jac