Useful Modern Hardware For The Apple II

Displays

At some point in time you may need or want to update or replace your Apple II monitor.  The original Apple II displays are by today’s standards heavy and bulky.  This means if you need one and can’t buy one locally, it’s going to cost to ship it to you.

The Apple II’s composite video allows a great deal of flexibility as many TV’s accept this form of input.  My 32″ LCD accepts composite video from multiple sources, as I’m sure many others do.

Dell 2001fp

If you want something a little more modest in scale, I found Dell had a 20″ monitor, the 2001fp, which is very flexible, accepts composite video, s-video, DVI-D and VGA.  I saw one being used in an eBay ad and asked the seller about it.  I bought one, loved it, and quickly bought another.  (I just checked eBay, and they priced from $55 to $120, 07-Aug-13.)  You can buy a stereo speaker bar for them that mounts on the bottom of the screen for under $20.  They also support 4 USB ports by adding a cable.

Storage

CFFA3000

Compact Flash for Apple.  If you have an Apple II that takes cards, this is a really nice option.  Check the link for a great deal more information, but some of the features include the ability to use a compact flash card to emulate hard drives, floppy disk emulation at the nibble level and USB storage of .dsk images.

Smartport Virtual Hard Drive

This is very similar to the CFFA3000 but is designed for the Apple //c, //c+, and //gs.  Instead of the compact flash card it uses USB drives.  It can also be used with the Apple //e with the Liron card.  Check the link for a great deal more information.

Other

David Schmenk’s Apple II Pi Adapter

It allows you to directly interface an Apple II with a Raspberry PI.  For more information check out the link in the links section.

No Slot Clock

(Not really modern as they were around back when the Apple II’s were new.)

The chip used in the No Slot Clock is available as the Dallas DS1216E.  You remove one of the 28 pin ROMs, insert the clock chip and replace the ROM chip into the clock chip.  The directions for the no slot clock recommend the CD ROM chip on the //e and the //c has one near the front hidden by the keyboard.

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Last Updated: 22-Jul-14 at 09:47PM