Re: GET Apple II OS from internet

["Terence J. Boldt" <apple2@cgocable.net>]

>While that's true, it's not very useful. The command, by the way, is LOAD
>from Applesoft BASIC. But the cassette port is not on some of the Apple II


I knew that, but that only gets BASIC programs.  From the monitor you type
{start}.{end}R and it will read in binary data to that address.

>models. It's on the Apple ][, Apple ][+ and Apple //e, but not the Apple
>IIGS. I'm not sure if it's on the Apple //c and Apple //c+ or not--someone
>who has them could fill us in.


Of course, but don't II's through IIe's make up 75% of the machines out
there?

>Still, even if you're doing this with an Apple that _has_ a cassette port,
>what do you do then? Do you save it to tape? You can't save it to
>disk--we're presuming you don't have a boot disk yet. Yes, it's


DOS 3.3 is pretty small.  Although the code hasn't been written on the PC
yet, it would be simple to emulate a tape.  Once that was done, the new
Apple user does the following after connecting the audio cable between the
Apple cassette port and the PC's audio out:

1. Type "CALL -151" on the Apple
2. Type "9D00.BFFFR" on the Apple
3. Start the tape program on the PC
4. Type "9D84G" on the Apple
5. Type "INIT HELLO, S6, D1" on the Apple

They now have a boot disk.  The tape emulator on the PC could be used to
load other programs like a disk image copier etc.  They would simply BSAVE
the files onto their newly formatted DOS disk.

>theoretically possible to move some sort of disk O/S over the port this
way,
>but lets stay in the realm of reasonable here!


There's no need to change the OS, just copy over DOS 3.3.

>As I said, there is a serious chicken-and-egg problem with this approach.
>You really do need a physical boot disk from someone.


This solves the chicken before the egg problem for most Apples.  The only
problem is that the tape emulator is not written yet.  I may write it in a
few months when I'm done with my ProDOS ROM-Drive card.  Anyway, I
understand the limitations of this theory but it's best not to shoot down
peoples' ideas without thinking about the possibilites first.

--
Terence J. Boldt
Oakville, Ontario, Canada
mailto://apple2@cgocable.net
http://www.cgocable.net/~apple2