Re: Booting a IIe without a system disk

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

**** **** <***@***.com> wrote:

> Guys,
>     Just our of curisoity, would it be possible to offer a minimal system
> disk as a PC 'wav' file? While not the most ideal method of doing the PC<->
> apple2 software transfer... it might come in useful.

I assume you mean that you would connect the sound output of the PC to
the cassette input of the Apple II, and use this to "download" the
system software?

This won't work very well, since all you can do with the tape interface
is to LOAD a basic program, or load some machine code (if you know how
to use the relevant monitor commands and the details are known in
advance).  You can't boot from the tape input.

It should be possible to hack together a bootstrap version of DOS 3.3
which is wrapped in an Applesoft BASIC front end, so after using LOAD
and RUN, DOS 3.3 would be moved into its normal position.  You would
then need another LOAD/RUN procedure to get something else useful into
the machine.  It may be possible to combine these to produce an OS
bootstrap loader and pseudo-comms program.

If you wanted to do this with ProDOS, the initial "bootstrap" program
would have to include an image of the ProDOS kernel, and a machine code
program which handled subsequent communication (you could probably
manage without BASIC.SYSTEM).

It would be much easier (and probably faster) to do this with a serial
interface.  Assuming the interface is configured correctly, all you need
to do is IN#2 and the PC can directly drive the Apple II command line.
It could "type in" a bootstrap loading program, which could then use a
reliable protocol like XMODEM to transfer the operating system image and
proper file transfer utility.