Building the Base SUPERPROTO card

Tools Required

Here is a suggest list of tools that could be helpful or necessary in building the base SUPERPROTO card.

• Quality soldering station - I use a Weller WES51. Whatever you use, I recommend that it has some kind of temperature controlled tip. This will help prevent damage to the PCB when soldering
• Solder - use quality solder - thinner solder is vastly easier to work with than fat solder. The fat stuff sold at hardware stores is not suitable for these sort of electronics projects
• Wire cutters – for trimming component leads and cutting wire to length
• Your favorite PCB cleaning agent - Isopropyl Alcohol will dissolve many kinds of soldering resin. Windex will also help with cleaning PCBs
• Ohm meter - to check for good connections and shorts
• Logic probe or oscilloscope – handy if you are having trouble with bring up

Solder in Components

Note that the SUPERPROTO is design "upside down" compared to other Apple II peripheral cards. White dot on silk screen indicates where pin 1 end of socket should be located. See the image at the top of this page for reference.

1. Solder big sockets first, so you don't accidentally put a small socket where a big socket belongs.
2. If you are using 6522A, VIA, solder in all four sockets.
3. If you are omitting the 6522 VIA, solder in the 20,24, and 28 pin sockets, but omit the 40 pin socket.
4. Solder in the five .1UF caps into positions inidicated on card by labels C1 through C5. Orientation is not important.
5. Solder in the 10K pull up reisistor into the the position indicated by the label R1. Orientation is not important.
6. Solder in the 2 pin header in the holes indicated by the label WE.
7. For base "superpage" addressing of the 28C256, add a solder blob to solder jumpers P11, P12, P13, P14. If you don't understand superpages and plan on just testing the SUPERPROTO with the diagnostic program, add all four solder blobs.
8. For 6522A VIA support, add a solder blob to 6522A GND and +5V jumpers.

Insert Chips

1. Insert the chips, checking orientation carefully, as the board is "upside down" compared to many other Apple II peripheral boards.
2. Until you are able to successfully run the diagnostic, leave the shunt to the WE header/jumper out (disconected). This can be put in place, once you decide you need to write to the EEPROM with software for your application.

Run Diagnotics

1. Your EEPROM comes preprogrammed with a diagnostic utility in superpage 0.
2. With the computer powered off, insert the SUPERPROTO into the Apple II slot of your choice.
3. Power on your computer and run the diagnostic program by typing slot# cntrl-P return.
4. The pass and interrupt count should be printed about every 2 minutes and should increment together with each pass completed
5. Stop the test by typing on the keyboard, or resetting your computer.
6. In case of trouble, more details and the program listing for the diagnostic program can be found here.