Re: IIe bootup question -I'm a newbie.

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

leucoplast writes ...
> 
> Hi, folks. I recently purchased a IIe for a friend of mine, and I would like
> to test it out before I give it to him for Christmas. When I turn the system
> on, the only thing that appears on the screen is the Apple II logo. Do I
> need to have a traditional boot disk in the floppy drive, or is there some
> way to get the computer to move past this logo?
>

     Starting with the Apple II+, Apple II computers try to boot a disk when
powered up. If there is no disk to boot, you can press Control-Reset (or just
Reset on many II+'s) a second or so after powering ON the computer. This will
get out of the boot-up scan or past the error display (if there is one) and,
usually, leave you with the Applesoft BASIC "]" prompt.

 
> I have never worked with an Apple II so I'm not sure of what is supposed to
> happen. From what I've read, it seems that the Apple II's had some sort of
> simple OS burned into the ROM, so that you didn't need to have a bootdisk to
> boot the system up -sort of like the old Tandy 1000ex's. Is this correct?
>

     Kind of. All Apple II's have the "Monitor" program in ROM. It shows the
"*" prompt and lets you work with the Apple II in machine code. You can dump
blocks of hexadecimal code to the screen (or a printer, etc.), get disassembly
listings of code, view/change contents of memory locations, enter and run
programs in hexadecimal, and more.

     Except for the earliest Apple II's, (the "Apple II") all models include
Applesoft BASIC in ROM, too. Resetting usually gets you to this BASIC and the
"]" mentioned above. (From BASIC, you can do a CALL -151 to get to the
Monitor.)

     What is _not_ in ROM is a Disk Operating System. (Mainly, these are DOS
3.3 and ProDOS.)  To have a DOS active, you must boot a disk.

     On the Apple II, when a DOS is booted it is generally linked into
Applesoft BASIC-- i.e. BASIC acquires a bunch of DOS commands, like CATALOG,
RUN, LOAD, SAVE, BLOAD, BSAVE, etc.. When DOS 3.3 boots, it usually ends by
running a BASIC start program on the disk which is usually named "HELLO". When
ProDOS boots, it often ends by running a BASIC start program named "STARTUP".

     For more information, see ...

Gabriel Morales's Apple II Beginner's Guide at
 http://www.concentric.net/~Togega/Apple2/

Terry Allen's Home of the Apple II at
 http://www.educate.net.au/~apple2/

Charles 'Dr. Tom' Turley's huge collection of Apple II info on the
 Apple Cabi.net archives at
 Florida- ftp://24.96.48.134:6502/Cabi_Archives/FAQs.and.INFO/

Comp.sys.apple2.programmer FAQs
 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/apple2/programmerfaq/part1


Comp.sys.apple2's Apple II FAQs:  

Pure Text on Ground, MIT, and Utrecht
 ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/
 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/apple2/faq/
 http://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS/apple2/faq/

Line-length formatted Text on Tarnover, Florida, and USA2WUG
 ftp://tarnover.dyndns.org/cabi/FAQs.and.INFO/A2.Csa2.FAQs/
 ftp://24.96.48.134:6502/Cabi_Archives/FAQs.and.INFO/A2.Csa2.FAQs/
 http://www.grin.net/~cturley/A2.FAQs.and.INFO/CSA2.FAQs/

HTML web site versions on II Computing and Help Page
 http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/A2FAQs1START.html
 http://members.xoom.com/apple_II/faqs.html (under construction)


      
 
> Also, is there anyone out there who could e-mail me a bootdisk image, that I
> could load onto a floppy for this system?
 ....

     You could email a regular contributor to this newsgroup. Expect to pay for
materials and postage.



Rubywand