Re: Trying to be calm about Alltech

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Steven M. Fish" <iigs_killspamarz@bytebucket.com> wrote:

>I just tried a little experiment.  I moved the Focus drive to Slot 6 and
>reassigned that slot to "Your Card".  Guess what?  It worked!  I'm now
>using GS/OS - and only a decade and a half after it was released!  :)
>
>Let me take this opportunity to say a big thanks to the people who
>responded to this post.  I'm new back to the AppleII community and glad to
>be back with such a great online resource.  Thanks again.
>
>Let me also say I feel this proves Alltech produce and ship a great
>product.  I wish the drive were a little bigger (ended up with 2 partitions
>totaling closer to 45M instead of the advertised 60), but this product gets
>me started full force back in the Apple II experience in a way I could not
>have achieved without their services.  The hardware problem was not with
>their card, but with my 7th slot.
>
>Anyone know where I can find a compatible 320M drive now?  :)

Pull one from an old laptop.  In fact, many of the older drives work.
Look for an old laptop or notebook PC with a 500 megabyte (or
larger but 500MB should be just right for most people) 2.5 IDE
hard drive.  Pull the drive.  Replace the one on the Focus card
with it.  Then you need to find a GS/OS floppy startup disk and
install set.  Use the floppy startup to run the Focus formatter
software (either on the Alltech floppy or on the current Focus
drive).  The formatter autoconfigures the drive geometry and lets
you specify partition size.  Split it into two partitions, the first
one 32MB (for bootable ProDOS) and the next one however
many hundreds of megabytes you have remaining (for HFS).
Now reboot the IIGS from the GS/OS startup floppy.  Format
the first partition ProDOS and the last one HFS.  Install GS/OS
on the ProDOS partition.  Then install the Focus driver from the
Alltech floppy to your setup.  Now reboot the IIGS from the
Focus drive.  That should do it!  Good luck.