The Base 64A, an Apple ][+ from Taiwan

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The Apple ][ was easy to copy: its schematics and the listing of its Monitor came in its manuals, and its parts could be bought anywhere. In the early eighties workshops in Taiwan made copies of the Apple ][+, some sold as kits, some under names of their own, and Apple went to court against many of them.

The Base 64A, of Copam Electronics, is one: an Apple ][+ with 64 KB, that runs the programs of the Apple and its disks, with a few things of its own. It shows small letters on the screen, which the ][+ can’t, and its ROM, larger than the Apple’s, has a word processor that BASIC starts with a command: WRITER.

This page switches it on, writes and prints a letter with that word processor, and starts Apple’s own DOS 3.3 on it.

What you need

For the last step, DOS 3.3 System Master - 680-0210-A (1982).dsk, Apple’s DOS 3.3 System Master, on the Asimov archive. ./fetch-disks.sh in this repository downloads it into disks/ and checks it. The rest needs nothing but izapple2, which carries the ROMs of the Base 64A.

The user’s manual of the Base 64A is on the Internet Archive, with a chapter on Mini-Writer, its seventh.

The machine

A Base 64A with a printer:

the 6502 processor at 1 MHz and 64 KB of memory: 48 KB on the board, and 16 KB of a language card, which izapple2 puts in slot 0;
the ROM of the Base 64A, with Applesoft BASIC, the Monitor and Mini-Writer, and its characters, small letters among them;
a parallel printer card in slot 1, with a printer that is a file: what the card prints goes to printer.out, in the folder izapple2 runs in.

izapple2 -model none -board base64a -cpu 6502 -screen green \
    -rom "<custom>" \
    -charrom "<internal>/BASE64A_ROM7_CharGen.BIN" \
    -s0 language \
    -s1 parallel,file=printer.out

For DOS 3.3, the same machine with a Disk II controller in slot 6 and the System Master in drive 1, and no printer:

izapple2 -model none -board base64a -cpu 6502 -screen green \
    -rom "<custom>" \
    -charrom "<internal>/BASE64A_ROM7_CharGen.BIN" \
    -s0 language \
    -s6 'diskii,disk1=disks/DOS 3.3 System Master - 680-0210-A (1982).dsk'

The model base64a of izapple2 has the first machine, with a Disk II controller more and the DOS 3.3 diskette that izapple2 carries:

izapple2 -model base64a -screen green

Switched on

Start izapple2 with the first command. Where an Apple ][+ says APPLE ][, this one says its own name, and gives the prompt of Applesoft.
Type PRINT "Hello from a Base 64A", with small letters inside the quotes.

The Apple ][+ has no small letters: its keyboard types capitals, and its screen shows none. The Base 64A shows them, from its own characters.

Mini-Writer

Type WRITER. The word processor of the ROM, Mini-Writer 1.0, shows its menu. A key and Return choose. WRITER is a command added to Applesoft; WRITE alone is a syntax error.
Choose N, Initialize new file, and press Y to erase what is in memory; then choose E, Edit file in memory. The screen is the page, with the cursor at the top. Type the letter, with Return at the end of each line:
```
Dear Ada,

I write to you with Mini-Writer, the
word processor in the ROM of my Base
64A. I typed WRITER, and there it was.

Yours,
Alan
```
Replace Ada with Grace. Control-B takes the cursor to the beginning; Control-S is search and replace, which asks for /what is/what it becomes/: type /Ada/Grace/, A for automatic, and Return.

Mini-Writer’s other commands are Control keys too, each with a line of help when pressed: Control-Y to move text between two markers, Control-K to copy a part to the disk, Control-I to bring a file of the disk in, Control-D for a command of DOS.
Press Escape and then Control-Q to go back to the menu, and choose P, Print file, and P again, Print new document. Mini-Writer shows how it will print.

It prints with a margin, a number at the top of each page, to a printer card at $C100, slot 1, and a sheet at a time: it waits for a key at each page, for the next sheet to be put in. Type G, single page, and 0, for paper that goes on, and Return to accept. Press Return for no heading, and Return to start printing.

The letter goes to printer.out:
```
                                      Page 1




     Dear Grace,

     I write to you with Mini-Writer, the
     word processor in the ROM of my Base
     64A. I typed WRITER, and there it was.

     Yours,
     Alan
```
The Base 64A sends its characters with the top bit set and ends each line with a carriage return and a line feed. This turns printer.out into plain text on a Mac or on Linux:
```
LC_ALL=C tr '\200-\377' '\000-\177' < printer.out | tr -d '\r'
```

Apple’s DOS

Quit izapple2 and start it with the second command. The Base 64A starts DOS 3.3 from the System Master, as an Apple ][+ would, and its greeting program says APPLE II. Type CATALOG.

That was the point of a copy: the programs and the diskettes of the Apple ran on it as they were. WRITER works here too.

What next

The Basis 108 is another copy, from Germany, with 80 columns built in, Switch on an Apple ][+ the machine it copied, and Printing prints from Applesoft on the same card.