3 ms·
The Mockingboard is a wonderful piece of hardware and it's great to see them still being produced today. They're even available in kit form if you'd like to so
by Arainach 5y ago
The Mockingboard is a wonderful piece of hardware and it's great to see them still being produced today. They're even available in kit form if you'd like to solder it together yourself (it's all through mount, nothing difficult).
I will note, however, that it's not just that the card doesn't ship with the speech chips (SSI-263P) - no one has made them in a very long time, and they're essentially impossible to find (and very expensive if you do).
Finally, if you're going to dust off an old Apple device and fire it up, I would seriously recommend rebuilding the power supply - capacitors don't last forever, and they can do unfortunate things when they fail.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago> rebuilding the power supply Any links or info on how to do this? > no one has made them in a very long time, and they're essentially impossible to find That’s too bad. Do you know any software that actually used them anyway? Regarding the built in speaker, I have a disk called AppleRock ‘83 that has 4 or 5 sampled songs (Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, ZZ Top, etc). Plays through the speaker, no mockingbird. The audio is amazing.
- EvanAnderson 5y agoI bought power supply rebuild kits from Reactive Micro[1] for my IIe and IIgs. I paid a lot more than just recapping the existing power supply, for sure, but it was dead easy to install. [1] https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/universal-psu-kit/ https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/universal-psu-kit/
- harywilke 5y agoMostly it's the Capacitors that go bad. Adrian's Digital Basement has some videos on resurrecting old 8bit apple computers. here's a good playlist to start. He starts talking about the power supply around the 26 min mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTkX7rkq_Kk&list=PL4tFqFVNf5LT6X3sMRfbRWuTVE5NuEmKj&index=8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTkX7rkq_Kk&list=PL4tFqFVNf5...