Create an Apple-1 replica without any soldering? Yes it's possible!

When I went on a business trip in December 2014, I took my L-Star project with me to work on it from the hotel. Unfortunately it didn't survive the trip: The Propeller stopped responding to the PC.

The light was on, but nobody was home.

Because I was away from home, I didn't have the tools or parts to check what was wrong. Ironically, I was near the Parallax office in Rocklin, California, but getting parts from there wasn't going to do me any good because I didn't have the tools to put a replacement together either.

So my only option was to get the Propeller Education Kit (short PEKit) from Fry's Electronics in Sacramento, and use it to rebuild the L-Star project on a breadboard. This was the result.

The PEKit is a great set of breadboards, parts and wires (not to mention the great book by Andy Lindsay that's included), and it was fun to set it up. All that was missing was the WDC 65C02 (which I got from the socket of the original build), a power supply (the PEKit runs on a 9V battery) and breadboard connectors for video and the PS/2 keyboard connector. Well, as it happened, I had ordered those from Parallax just before I left on my trip, so when I got home I could fix that problem.

Next mission: a replica for the OSI Superboard.