Apple IIGS noob advice

[Soviet Conscript]

well, theres been alot of chat going around about classic gameing computers and since i just got a apple IIgs today i thought i would ask for any advice

first off i have zero experence with anything apple from the computers to ipods.

it game with the unit, a joystick, 2 floppy drives (one of both type) and a keyboard. no mouse

when i boot up it says rom 3 which from what i read is the one to have.

now unless i acually have a game in the first drive hooked up it just goes to a "check startup device" screen. if it detects a game it plays the game. i assume this means i need some kind of OS disk if i want to just get into the computer.

anyone have any advice on any expansions i should get for this thing? except obviously a mouse.

oh yhea, and how do you open these things?

thanks!

[icbrkr]

Any old-style Mac keyboard and mouse will work.

You need a ProDOS or DOS disk to boot the machine up. If you have an old Mac (pre G3) lying around, the boot disks are available from Apple and you can make them on the Mac.

[Jorpho]

I understand you can also do all kinds of things with disk images if you get a serial card.

Didn't the IIGS still have BASIC in ROM?

[icbrkr]

I understand you can also do all kinds of things with disk images if you get a serial card.

Didn't the IIGS still have BASIC in ROM?

Nope, unfortunately. It does have an ML monitor though.

You can network the IIgs with an old-school Mac through the Appletalk (printer) port - no extra hardware cept for the cable needed. It's a bit of a pain to make the Network disk though but there's tutors on the net. I did it years ago.

[Jorpho]

It does have an ML monitor though.

Can't say I'm familiar with that term.

[Soviet Conscript]

ML = multi link?

just a shot in the dark

[Soviet Conscript]

Any old-style Mac keyboard and mouse will work.

You need a ProDOS or DOS disk to boot the machine up. If you have an old Mac (pre G3) lying around, the boot disks are available from Apple and you can make them on the Mac.

what about the GUI for the GS?

[Jorpho]

what about the GUI for the GS?

GSOS is on the Apple website too. Pretty nifty, eh? Look, Hypercard!
http://www.info.apple.com/support/ol...twarelist.html

[Soviet Conscript]

GSOS is on the Apple website too. Pretty nifty, eh? Look, Hypercard!
http://www.info.apple.com/support/ol...twarelist.html

do i need some other kind of apple computer to download those files to? since all i own are PC's and the GS

[Battlehork]

Any old-style Mac keyboard and mouse will work.

You need a ProDOS or DOS disk to boot the machine up. If you have an old Mac (pre G3) lying around, the boot disks are available from Apple and you can make them on the Mac.

do i need some other kind of apple computer to download those files to? since all i own are PC's and the GS

This stuff is so old you could probably emulate a 68K mac (MacOS 7.5 is freely available on that same site) to run the software also.

[Jorpho]

This stuff is so old you could probably emulate a 68K mac (MacOS 7.5 is freely available on that same site) to run the software also.

Unfortunately, unless that GS has a high-density 3.5" drive, it will be impossible to create a compatible floppy with a PC floppy drive.

[icbrkr]

Unfortunately, unless that GS has a high-density 3.5" drive, it will be impossible to create a compatible floppy with a PC floppy drive.

The controller in the Mac can write the disks, a PC with or without an internal drive cannot.

ML = Machine Language. So it has a machine language monitor built in. Wow, I didn't think I was *that* old

[Ed Oscuro]

Unfortunately, unless that GS has a high-density 3.5" drive, it will be impossible to create a compatible floppy with a PC floppy drive.

What about a 5.25" drive in a PC?

[Jorpho]

The controller in the Mac can write the disks, a PC with or without an internal drive cannot.

Well, a PC can write to a high-density Macintosh floppy - but of course the disk images in question wouldn't be high density anyway.

Apparently even with a Mac, writing the double-density GS floppies is a dicey business:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....f07d831b8c3d26

What about a 5.25" drive in a PC?

Since it still uses the same PC floppy controller, I doubt it.

[icbrkr]

Well, a PC can write to a high-density Macintosh floppy - but of course the disk images in question wouldn't be high density anyway.

Apparently even with a Mac, writing the double-density GS floppies is a dicey business:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....f07d831b8c3d26

Interesting. I only used the Mac originally to make the GS disks to boot the system up. From there, I brought the images over an Localtalk network via cable and made the disks on the Iigs. At least in my case, I was able to make the boot disks!

Now you've given me a project for the weekend. I have an Amax II+ Mac Emulator card in my A4000T with a localtalk port. I'm wondering if I can network the two together or make IIgs disks from it... it interfaces with the floppy drive too...

[Ze_ro]

If you want to get some real use out of the IIGS, you'll probably want to install a hard drive. This requires installing a hard drive controller card, though I suggest you look into the CFFA II, which lets you use a Compact Flash card instead. You might have to wait until the guy decides to make another batch of them though, as the last batch is all sold.

I'd also recommend installing some more memory... here's a decent RAM expansion that should get you by.

As for making GS/OS disks, Apple themselves offer the disk images as a free download over here, but unless you have access to an older Mac (anything with a floppy disk drive should be able to do it... not sure if newer Macs with USB floppy drives would work), you might have to ask someone else to prepare the disks for you. You'd also need to write the images to 720k double density disks and NOT to the much more common 1.4MB high density disks. DD disks can be somewhat hard to find.

--Zero

[InsaneDavid]

Old thread, but there's an easier way to go about this.

Forget all this special formatting and back and forth with old Macs and special networking. I'm pretty sure you can use ADTPro to load and write disk images on your IIgs.

I understand you can also do all kinds of things with disk images if you get a serial card.

For the IIgs you use the modem port - info here.

Granted, I've never used ADTPro with a IIgs but I use it all the time with my Enhanced IIe and a Super Serial Card. Once you spend about 15 minutes to get your ADTPro disk made, it takes on average less than a minute to create a disk image. ADTPro runs on your host computer, silently serving files to the Apple when requested. Read through the ADTPro site and take a look at their videos - it'll make it easier to understand.

Example of how I transfer disk images:
Connect IIe and PC with serial cable.
Boot ADTPro loader on IIe.
Remove ADTPro diskette (or leave it in if you have two drives, doesn't matter).
Format a diskette with ADTPro loader.
Launch the ADTPro server on PC.
On the IIe, select to receive a disk image.
On the IIe, type in the file name of the disk image I want, "MUNCHERS.DSK" for instance.
On the IIe, select the drive the image is to be sent to.

And away it goes, the file is sent from the PC to the IIe, and written to the diskette in the drive I specified. Less than a minute later, I have a ready to go diskette of that image. Reboot the IIe and you're using a fresh copy of vintage software.

[Jorpho]

You'd also need to write the images to 720k double density disks and NOT to the much more common 1.4MB high density disks.

Really? I thought a high-density disk formatted to 800k is indistinguishable from a double-density disk, as far as a double-density drive is concerned,

[Ze_ro]

Really? I thought a high-density disk formatted to 800k is indistinguishable from a double-density disk, as far as a double-density drive is concerned,

My understanding of the matter is that high-density drives use a higher power magnetic flux to write to the disk, which a double-density drive might not be able to overwrite... or something to that effect.

In theory, if you had unformatted high-density disks, and you only ever used them in a double-density drive, it might work perfectly fine... but most disks were sold preformatted, so I'm not sure how hard it would be to find such disks.

--Zero

[AB Positive]

An alternate method if you don't feel like going the CF route would be to find an old SCSI zip drive which makes all your zip disks 100MB mac hard drives. Can't beat that for the $10 it'd probably cost on eBay.