HERE IS A MIMIC SPARTAN! MADE BACK IN THE 80\'S TO ALLOW COMMODORE 64 COMPUTER PEOPLE TO USE APPLE II/II+ SOFTWARE.IT COMES WITH A SUPPLEMENT TO THE MANUAL FROM ACTIVE SURPLUS WHO SOLD THE LAST OF THESE OFF MAYBE 25 YEARS AGO...BEFORE YOU ASK, NO, I DO NOT HAVE THE MANUAL...I HAVE MANY PAGES FROM ACTIVE SURPLUS THAT LOOK QUITE HELPFUL. THEY MAKE REFERENCE TO A DISK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO COME WITH IT, WELL, I HAVE HUNTED AND SEARCHED AND IT IS NOT TO BE FOUND...SORRY...SO SORRY!THE LAST TIME IT WAS USED WAS LONG AGO!THE CASE IS IN VERY GOOD, BUT NOT PERFECT SHAPE...THERE IS A BIT OF A SCRATCH ON THE TOP...PERHAPS FROM A MONITOR...NOT SURE.INSIDE IT IS CLEAN, AND LOVELY...I SEE NO SIGNS OF ANYTHING THAT WOULD CAUSE ME ANY CONCERN.IT WAS ALWAYS STORED IN A DRY LOCATION WITH LOTS OF OTHER BITS AND PIECES OF COMMODORE HISTORY AND THEY ARE ALL IN GREAT SHAPE.IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, PLEASE ASK BEFORE YOU offer...I WILL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER AS BEST I CAN...THERE ARE MANY PICTURES...I TRIED TO GET SHOTS OF EVERYTHING...INCLUDING THE INSIDE OF THE TOP WITH ALL THE SIGNATURES!THE DOCUMENTATION LOOKED TO BE PERHAPS 20 PAGES WORTH...OR SO...I WILL COUNT THE PAGES LATER...RIGHT NOW I WANT TO GET THIS LISTED SO THAT THE TIMING IS GOOD FOR AS MANY TIME ZONES AS POSSIBLE...INSIDE YOU WILL FIND APPLE SLOTS, AND MORE COMMODORE 64 CARTRIDGE SLOTS AS WELL AS THREE RESET SWITCHES...I SUSPECT 1 FOR EACH OF THE SLOTS...NEAT TRICK THAT...AT LEAST THAT IS WHAT I THINK THEY ARE FOR...SO, HERE IS A CHANCE TO OWN A PIECE OF COMMODORE APPLE HISTORY...THIS WILL BE AN sale...LET THE GAMES AND THE offerDING BEGIN!IF YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH IT, GO TO GOOGLE AND SEARCH FOR MIMIC SPARTAN OR COMMODORE SPARTAN AND YOU CAN FIND ALL SORTS OF INFORMATION ABOUT THIS VERY RARE AND INTERESTING COMMODORE ACCESSORY.IF YOU ARE COMMODORE COLLECTOR, YOU KNOW THAT THESE MACHINES DO NOT COME ALONG VERY OFTEN, AND THIS IS THE ONLY ONE I HAVE TO OFFER FOR SALE, YES IT IS TIME FOR ME TO OPEN UP THE VAULT AND FINALLY, AFTER MORE THAN 30 YEARS OF COLLECTING, LET SOME THINGS GO TO OTHER COLLECTORS. I REMEMBER DISCUSSING THE CAPABILITIES OF THIS COMPUTER WITH JIM BUTTERFIELD OH SO LONG AGO. HE ALWAYS SAW THE GOOD IN EVERYTHING, BUT OF COURSE, THE COMPUTERS ARE THE PLATFORM FOR THE CREATIVE PROGRAMMERS.SO, THERE YOU HAVE IT...A RARE MACHINE...THAT YOU KNOW SEARCH ENGINES WILL BE LIGHTING UP WHEN IT GOES LIVE ON !AS I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IN THE WORLD THIS MACHINE WILL END UP, THE COST OF SHIPPING WILL BE A MYSTERY UNTIL SUCH ISSUES ARE KNOWN, THEREFORE, IF YOU DO THE BUY IT NOW AND PAY IMMEDIATELY, ONCE IT IS ALL PACKED AND READY TO GO, I WILL SEND YOU AN INVOICE FOR THE SHIPPING BASED ON YOUR LOCATION AND PREFERENCES.COME TO THINK OF IT, THAT MIGHT NOT WORK...WHEN I ENTERED THE INFORMATION INTO THE LISTING, I HAD TO PUT IN VALUES...SO I PUT IN $100 FOR NORTH AMERICA AND $200 FOR THE WORLD, BUT WE CAN SORT OUT WHAT IS WHAT AFTER IT IS PACKED AND IT IS GETTING SHIPPED. IN THIS CASE, I THINK TRACKING IS GOOD, AND FASTER IS GOOD, BUT WE CAN WORK ALL THAT OUT.PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU MAKE AN OFFER OR DO THE BUY IT NOW PRICE.THIS IS A 5 DAY LISTING...IF IT SELLS, IT IS GONE...IF IT DOES NOT, I MIGHT JUST PUT IT BACK IN THE COLLECTION.THE MACHINE RUNS ON 117 VAC...SO IT WAS INTENDED FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN MARKET, BUT OF COURSE IN THE COLLECTOR WORLD, WE TINKERERS HAVE WAYS OF GETTING WHAT WE NEED DONE DONE...I THINK THE MACHINE WAS MADE IN THE USA, BUT I AM NOT 1000% SURE...TO SUMMARIZE, A GREAT HISTORICAL MACHINE, AND YOU PAY THE SHIPPING AND HANDLING AND ANY AND ALL FEES IT TAKES TO GET THIS INTO YOUR HANDS. NOT SURE IF THERE WOULD BE IMPORT DUTIES OR OTHER TAXES GOING INTO YOUR COUNTRY. THAT IS UP TO YOU TO KNOW AND BE AWARE OF.PAYMENT IS EXPECTED PROMPTLY...RIGHT AWAY IF YOU DO THE BUY IT NOW, BUT WITHIN 24 HOURS IF WE COME TO SOME OTHER ARRANGEMENT.PAYPAL IS THE METHOD OF CHOICE.LOCAL PICKUP IS AVAILABLE IF YOU ARE WANTING NOT TO TRUST THIS HISTORIC RELIC TO CANADA POST AND WHATEVER OTHER ORGANIZATIONS GET INVOLVED IN THE SHIPPING PROCESS.FOR MY EXPENSES, I COULD DELIVER IT TO YOU, BUT I DO NOT THINK EITHER ONE OF US WANT TO GO THAT ROUTE...THANKS FOR LOOKING...IF YOU KNOW WHO JIM BUTTERFIELD WAS, HE WAS INDEED A GREAT MAN, AND HE IS MISSED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD OF COMMODORE....DAVID BRADLEY - FORMERLY OF THE BBBBS (BRADLEY BROTHERS BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM)P.S. THE DIMENSIONS OF THE BOX AND THE WEIGHT ARE ESTIMATES...WORRY NOT...WE WILL GET IT SORTED OUT!GOOD LUCK...HAPPY offerDING...PEACE!SOLD AS IS...NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, BUT IT WAS WORKING...THE LAST TIME IT WAS USED...AND OH YES, IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN A NON-SMOKING HOME!IF YOU GOOGLE MIMIC SPARTAN, YOU WILL FIND LOTS OF INFORMATION...HERE IS SOME OF IT...Brent Marykuca, Mimic Systems\' lead software developer, tells the story of the Spartan... \"Back in 1983 or \'84 -- just after the release of the Commodore 64 -- a friend of mine in Victoria, British Columbia, had taken the original Apple II version of Space Invaders and made a few changes here and there to allow it to run reasonably well on the similarly-endowed C64. Of course, the prospect of writing a software product that would allow customers to run Apple II software on the newly-released, relatively inexpensive Commodore system was very appealling to some other people I knew, and they got all excited about the idea. Once it was shown that you really couldn\'t expect to do it in software, Mimic Systems was founded to develop a hardware solution. Fast forward to 1985, when I (at the tender age of 19) was hired to work as the lead software developer on a product dubbed \"The Spartan\" a Frankenstinian creation the likes of which we will not see again. \"The Spartan was an Apple II clone with a difference -- the difference being that it didn\'t come with a keyboard. Across the front of the machine were a series of edge connectors and cables that exactly matched up with the cartridge port, printer port, power input, etc. on the back of the C64. The idea was that you\'d \"mate\" your C64 to the Spartan (all those connectors also showed up on the back of the Spartan), thereby creating a dual-processor system that would run Apple II and C64 software -- one of each simultaneously. A custom chip handled switching the keyboard and video between C64 and Apple II mode. In addition, the Spartan provided the user with four cartridge slots where there was only one on the C64, and a C64 to Apple Joystick converter. \"A particularly horrifying addition was the \'DOS Card\', an Apple II disk controller that you installed *inside* the Commodore 1541 disk drive, between the drive mechanism and the 1541 logic board. In 1541 mode, the \'DOS Card\' simply passed signals through from the 1541 logic, but at the flick of a switch (F6, I believe) it would take over the mechanism and turn the thing into an Apple II drive. As you can imagine, the potential for grave damage to both Apple II and 1541 diskettes was enormous and often realized. \"The Spartan hardware was highly \'customizable\' for its day. It contained no less than 24 jumper blocks on the main board and CPU card so that the user could customize interrupts, ROM mapping, power-up state (C64/Spartan), reset capabilities (can the Spartan reset C64 and vice-versa), address mapping of certain hardware features, joystick conversion features and availability of additional RAM banks. \"The software features of the Spartan included a compatible Applesoft BASIC -- very compatible, since it was created by disassembling the binary from the the Applesoft ROM and reordering assembly level instructions so that the binary image of the software would be different, but behavior when run would be identical. The Spartan had software control of audio and video switching between the two systems\' video modes, as well as a mixed audio mode. An Apple-like assembly language monitor was available on the Commodore side. \"The software contained a \'slave mode\' where by using custom commands in the monitor (also available via BASIC on both machines), you could transfer data between the two systems and even execute programs on the slave system. The most interesting example of the use of this feature was a 3-D graphics demo in which some of the calculation tasks were offloaded to the slave machine. \"The Spartan actually shipped to customers some time in late 85-early 86, if I recall correctly. Apart from the technical challenges, the whole Mimic Systems story was pretty sordid, characterized by weekly changes to the design by the president of the company (he would typically change it back the following week), frequent unmotivated firings of technical staff (he fired three in one day I remember, one guy because he was watching the plotter draw a circuit board design rather than working), and a draconian management style (we were paid by the hour and required to \'clock out\' to go to the bathroom). The saga ended for me in early 1986 when I quit shortly after the president of the company wrote himself a big cheque from the payroll account and took off for South America -- according to legend, anyhow. \"Mimic Systems\' Spartan: The Low Point in Apple II cloning!\"