the ram is important for me to learn considering I am doing a 100% restore on my 1985 Apple //c (rom2) and the thing has 128KB of it, along with its pretty easy to upgrade in the future outside of my nostalgia as parallel ram has not changed much
You're restoring an Apple //c? What happened to it that caused it to stop working? I find it curious; I have a couple of //gs boxes in my shop that work fine (well, last time I played with them, which was a while back).
Now my Altair - that's a beast of a different color; that thing's going to be an absolute bear to restore when I get-round-to-it. As far as I can tell, it sat under a pile o' junk and has more dirt in it and such; ugh. Getting the power-supply up and running (without exploding - it likely needs new caps) will be the first job...
Good luck on your project; it sounds like a fun a thing to try a hand at. I know when I get around to working on my Altair, I might try building a TV typewriter for an interface to it (I have a copy of the "TV Typewriter Cookbook" - so it shouldn't be too difficult, outside of sourcing the components).
