Late europlus Census Info

So, I’m home from my Retrochallenge Roadtrip (and very tired), and I have some info to add to my europlus Census. Here’s the updated data…

Serial numberDate CodeCPUNotes
IA2S2-669150no date code65C02wrong (apple ][plus) lid
IA2S2-667843518265C02no speaker or joystick socket
IA2S2-700105418265C02
IA2S2-67133081186502
IA2S2-61449482376502previously no label
IA2S2-65367781316502
IA2S2-67643381096502no PSU

(Note: that table is sortable – click on the little up/down arrow icon that appears next to columns headers as you hover your cursor near them to sort by that column. When you do, you’ll see how out of sync the motherboard date codes are vs the serial numbers.)

Among the changes beyond adding the two new machines, I have assigned the base plate I sourced from Jeremy with serial number 614494 to the machine with the label-less base plate, and I found the PSU for 671330.

676433 has had its case modified around the keyboard – it looks like it was meant to move the keyboard 3cm to the left and leave a 6cm wide gap for something(?) to the right of the keyboard. I originally thought it was for a numeric keypad, but 6cm isn’t wide enough.

It also has a 9-pin D-SUB connector at the top of the keyboard encoder card – the other machines’ keyboard encoder have a screen-printed outline for a connector there, but no notation.

If anyone has any clues or pictures of these two mods from back in the day, please let me know in the Comments below. I’ll try and do dome searching when I’ve recovered somewhat, but I would not reject a shortcut to the info.

What this all means is I may end up with six functional machines – I’ll likely move 676433’s lid to 669150 (which is lidless/wrongly lidded), not bother getting another PSU, and have spare parts from 676433’s motherboard (or swap the motherboard into one of the other cases).

While I’d rather have seven fully functional and complete machines, sourcing a spare PSU, lid and unmodified top case may not be feasible (without getting a whole extra machine, which would leave me with the same remainder of parts), so I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with having spare parts for six.

I already had a clone motherboard for parts, and Jeremy has lent me another clone motherboard, a europlus keyboard, and a keyboard encoder card for spare parts as well.

So, my current Retrochallenge status is:

I’ve not done much actual work (driving for 7+ hours doesn’t quite count), and I’ve now got more work to do!

And we’re almost a week in…phenomenal!

How’s your entry going?

7 thoughts on “Late europlus Census Info”

    1. Thanks, Robert – I wonder if the case mod was supposed to make way for the keypad? I’ve just remeasured and a 3-key wide keypad would fit, but it still seems odd to me. The keyboard in that machine is different to the other europluses, but I’ll document that more when I’m pulling them all apart and settling on my six working configs.

  1. I was also wondering if the europlus cases have date codes on the inside. Might be interesting to see if they do and how they match up.

    1. I can’t see anything in them now, but will check more closely as I take them apart, thanks for the idea. I’m going to be looking at chip date codes as well, and any date codes on things like the keyboards or keyboard encoder cards. Basically, anything that can give any context of the motherboard vs the case. The 6502s I have are a little newer than I’d prefer, but week 12 of ’84 is still pretty good, and they’re Synerteks like the originals all seem to be. I should know tomorrow night if the 6502s are functional.

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