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This is a serial interface card developed for the Apple-1 by Vince Briel, the extremely clever fellow who invented the Replica-I.  (And, I just saw, the coolest thing I may need to have one of {for the office, not the museum} - the AltairPC - if I can afford one after everything I've put into this collection!)  The function of this card is to allow a serial device to be connected to the keyboard in and display out sections of the Apple-1, so characters received by the interface are interpreted as keystrokes, and characters sent to the Apple display are also sent to the serial port.  This is extremely convenient as you can use your PC or Mac as a pseudo-mass storage device for the Apple, in place of a cassette interface, and is a much more reliable (albeit not exactly "period") way to load and save programs to the Apple.

The card itself is based on a PIC microprocessor (which probably has more raw computing power than the entire Apple-1, squared - lol!) and ingeniously connects via the PIA socket, replacing the 6820 (or 6821) PIA and itself then holding the PIA in a separate socket - thus inserting itself neatly between the PIA and the keyboard and display, and allowing it to intercept / insert characters into those interfaces.

More detail on how this is accomplished can be found in the book "Apple-I Replica Creation - Back to the Garage" by Tom Owad.  (Currently in print, available at Amazon and elsewhere.  Getting a copy and understanding it thoroughly was a prerequisite to my developing all the Apple-1 projects on this website, and I highly recommend it to anyone.  It deals in large part with how the original Apple-1 logic was translated into the Replica-I by Vince, and in the process provides tremendous insight into the workings of the logic section of the original Apple.  It also provides some great one of a kind insight from one of the original Apple-1 owners, Tom Owad.)

This website also contains a DIY project titled "Apple-1 (Not-So-Super) Serial-1 Card" which provides schematics and instructions to build a serial interface that functions in principle similarly to the Briel interface, but uses period components rather than a modern PIC.  That project can also provide additional insight as to the workings of the Apple-1, or if you are especially ambitious (or you need the ability to interface at an odd baud rate, parity, or stop bit configuration, such as to a Teletype ASR-33) you may want to try your hand at actually building one yourself.  If your primary goal is to hook your Replica-1 or Apple-1 replica to the PC, and use it to load and save programs, I highly recommend Vince Briel's interface as a very handy solution to accomplish that task.

Image Gallery
NOTE: Images beginning with 100 and up are larger versions of the same numbered lower resolution images +100.  Not all images appear in high resolution format.

000 Briel Serial Interface (jpg, 80 KB)	001 Serial Board Installed (jpg, 284 KB)	002 Serial Board Installed (jpg, 344 KB)	003 Serial Board Installed Close-up (jpg, 224 KB)	100 Briel Serial Interface LG (jpg, 270 KB)
103 Serial Board Installed Close-up LG (jpg, 1.8 MB)

Related Exhibits
Apple-1 (Not So Super) Serial-1

Related Web Resources
Briel Computers website

Go to the main exhibit (Apple-1)

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