Carlo (Mr.T), after reading your post again I see that you are expressing disappointment over not having a stock 128k. What I can say is that 128k logic boards are often sold on EBAY (in the USA at least) so you would have the opportunity of putting the logic board back in the stock condition that way. However, from a practical standpoint, you will find the 512k much more useful. I know I do. And if you have the original Apple 64k ROMs installed, then your Mac should also be fully compatible with even the oldest software that originally came out for the 128k machine.
Henry, I must say I found your photos and the magazine scans very interesting indeed! So you are Henry Spragens of Beck-Tech. (Perhaps I should have known this by now, but sometimes my head is fitting firmly in a hole in the ground.) That explains quite well your extensive electrical knowledge of these old compact Macs.
Perhaps this is a subject for another thread, but curiosity is killing me. As we all know, Levco and Dove ultimately became major players in the compact Mac memory upgrade market. In those early days, what challenges did Beck-Tech face in selling Mac memory upgrades against those competitors? And at what point did Beck-Tech call it quits?
I also came across this Aug 1985 InfoWorld review of Beck-Tech's MACMEGABYTES upgrade. The review mentions "Version 2" of the product included its own ROM in order to allow the use of the entire 1MB as system memory (versus 512k of RAM disk). Was your ROM 100% compatible with all software that worked on Apple's 64k ROM? And what happened to your upgrades when Apple's 128k ROM came on the scene?
Yet another question... Would you happen to still have a hi-rez version of the Beck-Tech Macintosh Logic Board Schematics? (Interestingly, the far right column of page 35 in the MICROTIMES July 1985 article you scanned mentions that another Mac schematic was created in MacPaint by IM Underground -- I'd love to see that.)
Henry, I must say I found your photos and the magazine scans very interesting indeed! So you are Henry Spragens of Beck-Tech. (Perhaps I should have known this by now, but sometimes my head is fitting firmly in a hole in the ground.) That explains quite well your extensive electrical knowledge of these old compact Macs.
Perhaps this is a subject for another thread, but curiosity is killing me. As we all know, Levco and Dove ultimately became major players in the compact Mac memory upgrade market. In those early days, what challenges did Beck-Tech face in selling Mac memory upgrades against those competitors? And at what point did Beck-Tech call it quits?
I also came across this Aug 1985 InfoWorld review of Beck-Tech's MACMEGABYTES upgrade. The review mentions "Version 2" of the product included its own ROM in order to allow the use of the entire 1MB as system memory (versus 512k of RAM disk). Was your ROM 100% compatible with all software that worked on Apple's 64k ROM? And what happened to your upgrades when Apple's 128k ROM came on the scene?
Yet another question... Would you happen to still have a hi-rez version of the Beck-Tech Macintosh Logic Board Schematics? (Interestingly, the far right column of page 35 in the MICROTIMES July 1985 article you scanned mentions that another Mac schematic was created in MacPaint by IM Underground -- I'd love to see that.)