Last night, I decided it would be a good idea to move a 512K memory board from a 5V Apple /// that has become increasingly flaky over the past few month, to a III Plus. While the effort was ultimately unsuccessful (more on that in a later post), the exercise gave me the opportunity to note some differences between the two boards. I took some pictures. Here they are.
Clock/Calendar Chip and Battery
Of course, we all know the story of the bad batch of clock chips Apple bought from National Semiconductor. It seems to be one of the few problems commonly associated with the /// for which Apple isn’t blamed. When end users and dealers began receiving their new ///s in late 1980, one of the first things they noticed was that the inbuilt clock wasn’t functioning normally. Sometimes, it would speed up randomly; other times, it failed to roll over properly and continued to count up. If you ever wondered what thirty-three o’clock looked like, you could ask your Apple ///.