Daniel O'Leary wrote in a message to Roy J  Tellason:

 DO> Looks lime my original post on this subject is lost on someone's
 DO> HD.  No matter, I'll recast it once again, within  the responses
 DO> below:

 DO> On 04/24/2004 04:06 AM, Roy_J._Tellason wrote:

>I didn't think that would be the case.  Franklin cloned the II,  and 
>close enough that they got themselves into trouble for doing so.  The 
>"Ace 1000" was the basic model,  and the 1200 was a similar model with 
>the case top replaced by an assembly that held a couple of disk drives.  
>They'd already gone into "reorganization" by the time the IIe hit the 
>market,  and I'd never heard that they cloned that machine.

 DO> There were two Franklin series.  The first were beige, like the
 DO> Apple IIs. The second series were black with chrome or brushed
 DO> aluminim trim. These were the ones that were like the Apple //c and
 DO> //e.  I played on them a couple of times. The keyboards had the
 DO> open and closed "F" keys too.

That's news to me.  I didn't think that they were still doing that sort of
thing by the time the IIc and IIe came out.  I've never seen either of
those.



>>I'm also wondering what I'd need to be able to read programs from
>>cassette, as I've got a lot of old cassette games that had Apple
>>versions on them.
>
> DO> You should need only a pair of sheilded cords with
"mini" (monaural)
> DO> earphone plugs on each end, if your Franklin ACE has the ports.
>
> LE> Doesn't *seem* to as I recall. That's why I was hoping there was a
> LE> card or something.
>
>Look on the rear of the board,  on the side opposite the power supply.  
>(Jeez, how the heck am I remembering this stuff?  :-)  I might even have 
>some technical data on that machine around here someplace.

 DO> The Apple II series all used the miniature mono connectors, and
 DO> they were built onto the motherboard.  My first computer was an
 DO> Apple II+ clone, called a TANO (Technical Associates of New
 DO> Orlieans) and I remember that it had the cassette port and the 14
 DO> pin or 16 pin "DIP" IC socket Game connector on a separate card
 DO> that plugged into one of the inteerface slots at the rear of the
 DO> computer.

Sounds familiar.

 DO> I didn't want to give a up a slot for it, and I had the schematics.
 DO> I compared the schematics for my board  with the one for the Apple
 DO> II and found that there was no "Slot 7", but the chips and circuits
 DO> used to construct the interfaces were the same, so I decided to add
 DO> the missing slot to the motherboard.   

 DO> I soldered ribbon cable to the correct places on the motherboard to
 DO> obtain the signals needed. Of the 50 signals on each connector,
 DO> there were only 2 that differentiated each slot from the rest (slot
 DO> select and I/O Select, I believe they were called) , and these were
 DO> available from the sockets on the motherboard. The rest were
 DO> soldered to the corresponding pins of an adjacent slot connector,
 DO> to keep line lengths short.   I atttached this cable to a crimp-on
 DO> edge connector that was just liike ones used for the apple slots. I
 DO> then superglued tha connector to a blank spot along the top rear
 DO> edge of the motherboard, lined up with the other sockets.  

 DO> It worked like a champ!!  I may still have the schematics for the
 DO> cassette/game card around here.  If I can find them,  I could put a
 DO> text representation of them up for you. The thing may have had a
 DO> dozen parts on it, max. If you have the old style Franklin and it
 DO> has slots but no ports, then a card like this should work.

I don't actually have any of that hardware.  I did have a Franklin
mainboard and disc controller card at one point,  that were empty,  but I
sold them to a guy and haven't had (or seen for that matter) any of that
hardware since.  I hope he had good luck with them.  I'd have had to
completely populate both boards,  acquire a case,  keyboard,  and drives, 
and then after all of that I'd have ended up with a 6502-based 40-column
machine.  To have 80 columns, a z80,  or be able to print I'd have had to
add cards for each of those things.  At that point the idea of homebrewing
such a machine started to lose its appeal somewhat...


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