When you look at the VGA adapters available for vintage Macintosh computers, you’ll notice that most of them are packed with DIP switches. Back in the CRT monitor era, this made sense... those switches allowed for maximum compatibility across a wide range of displays. But lose the manual, and it quickly becomes impossible to tell which switch does what. Today, almost everyone uses LCD displays. That made me wonder why not simplify this overly complicated, now somewhat nonsensical adapter...

Some time ago, I was working on the Super Wh-IWM Swapper (PLCC44 to DIP28 SWIM adapter) . However, due to the shortage of SWIM chips (343S-0061-A, 344S-0061-A), and the fact that even when available they were extremely expensive, the project stalled. In reality, the only practical option was to salvage SWIM chips from logic boards damaged by battery bombed and corrosion. In a way, this makes sense. The SWIM chips used from the Macintosh SE/30 through the Macintosh IIsi generation are usable,...

Some time ago, I designed a small daughter card called RAM Hijacker , a 64KB memory expansion daughter card that attaches to the Apple IIe 80COL text card (Apple Ref:820-0066-A) . Quite a bit of time has passed since then, and I decided it was time to revisit the idea and redesign a RAM card specifically for the Apple IIe. As I mentioned in my earlier project, the 80COL text card (Apple Ref:820-0066-A), which does not have any RAM, is now largely unnecessary... I suspect many people...