Korean Apple II Mockingboard Clone

I’ve been poking around for a Mockingboard sound card for my Apple IIe for a little while now, and the one thing I’ve learned from the experience is that despite robust third party software support, the dang things are rarer than hen’s teeth.

In recent years, GSE-Reactive apparently offered a limited run of homebrew Mockingboards, but those dried up a while back as well. Fortunately, it looks like another homebrew Mockinboard source has surfaced, this time hailing from Korea.

I scored one of these boards recently, and had the opportunity to try it out in my IIe with Electronic Art’s venerable Music Construction Set. The boards come stamped with a URL: http://cafe.naver.com/appleii. My knowledge of Korean is non-existent, so you’re pretty much on your own as far as navigating the site - but it does appear to be geared towards Apple II enthusiasts.

After installing the card in slot 5, I plugged a set of headphones into the on-board mini-jack output and loaded up one of the Music Construction Set demo tunes. The card worked wonderfully, outputting stereo six voice polyphony as per a Mockingboard Sound II.

Make no mistake, a Mockingboard isn’t exactly the pinnacle of synthy goodness, but it’s several orders of magnitude better than the clicks and sputters belched forth from any stock, non-GS Apple II.

The seller appears to be offering a stream of the cards on eBay, but not at a fixed price. I wound up paying $46 before shipping for mine - you may (or may not) be able to do better depending on demand. For a home brew, limited run card, $46 seems pretty reasonable and I’m quite happy having made the purchase.