Re: trying to get an Apple II GS going for fun...

[wizard@direct.ca (R. Priestley)]

PROJECT: Getting an "old" Apple II GS going for fun and science.

SUBJECT: Apple II GS [ROM Build 01]: with 1 meg RAM card, no expansion
ports filled, no hard drive, colour monitor, external 3.5" floppy
drive, mouse, standard keyboard. [Purchased for $10 CDN at a benefit
sale.]

A L'IL PHILOSOPHY: People are practically giving these things away
because the system disks are long gone and they have absolutely no
idea and don't care about getting their computer up and running. This
is good for me cause it's a lot of interesting fun to have for minimal
cost. Plus I get to learn how it works which is useful to me because I
am a power-user...

IMPRESSION: This is a happy little computer. It likes to be turned on,
it encourages participation and it has good karma. [I said it was only
an impression... :)

RESOURSES: Limited. [Minimal Expenditure.]

INITIAL PERSPECTIVE AND INTENTIONS: 

1] Get it running.
2] Collect and utilize some software.

LONG TERM: Hardware Expansions.

MY INITIAL MAJOR DISCOVERIES: 

1] 800k Floppies: The drive reads old-school 3.5" 800k floppy disks
and is not compatible with 3.5" 1.44meg floppies and any PC
formatting.
2] System Disk: Without any hard drive the system requires a "boot
disk" to read on startup to load any kind of shell, GUI or other
interface. [I do not yet have any system disks.]
3] OS: To quote Rubywand from a text document found on an FTP site
called 'AAA__Help_for_NEW_A2_Users': "With the old Apple, Inc. 1MB
card plugged into your Mem Expansion
Slot, you can boot and run many old "ProDOS-16" (an early GS System)
and System 5.0.4 games and utilities. You can, also, run most ProDOS-8
and DOS 3.3 software designed for the IIe and II+." However, with a
4meg RAM memory expansion card, a user is capable of running the
current OS for the Apple II GS, System 6.0.1. A hard drive would be of
utmost use with this setup. [At this stage and due to serious lack of
major funding for my Apple II GS research project, I am going to have
to start with basic system-building-blocks: System 5.0.4, and go from
there...] 
4] Expandability. The system would be made far more capable and ideal
with hardware upgrades like: memory expansion, plug and play hard
drives [with preloaded OS, tools and extras], modem, SCSI interface
for zip drives, or a nifty floppy drive controller card. Heheh, budget
allowing!!! Wow. I dont have this kind of "disposable" cash. [A floppy
drive controller card from ///SHH Systeme called the "BlueDisk
Universal Floppy Disk Controller Card"
http://www.wbwip.com/shh/bluedisk.html looks SUPER cool to me as a PC
user because it controls a standard format drive which reads and
writes 3.5" 1.44 meg floppies, EVEN MS-DOS FORMAT! aMaZiNg!!! Their
URL is listed below in the "Links" section.]
5] Features: Even without a boot disk, a user may access 2 ROM
features... when there is no disk in the drive, a startup screen
demands "Check Startup Device" then from there... 
***pressing CTRL-COMMAND-ESC together brings up the system control
panel [user sets options such as colour, sound volume and modem
baud... and can check the RAM size.] 
***alternatively, pressing CTRL-COMMAND-OPTION-RESET together
initiates a system check. [This function takes a minute. Some colours
and jumbled text flashed up, then there was a CooL extended system
beep, then my system reported, happily "System Good".]

PROBLEM: How to get files off the internet and onto 800k floppy disk
for use with the II GS...
[My] SOLUTION: 
1] Locate [!difficult locally in Vancouver] and purchase a bunch of
800k floppies.
2] Considering, as it seems likely to contributors to this newsgroup,
a Power Mac can read and write 3.5" 800k floppies, I can at the very
least download files off the net to a Power Mac I happen to know, and
load 'em up to disks from there. This may require a little extended
experimentation, and I must confess a wild and crazy desire to do the
following: download files at my leisure to my PC, transfer them to the
Power Mac, then write them to the 800k floppies... we'll see if it can
be done. 

USEFUL LINKS [so far]:
http://www.syndicomm.com/a2web/a2hrdware.html
http://machardware.miningco.com/msubap

FTP SITES:
ftp://apple.cabi.net/pub/applegs/
ftp://apple.cabi.net/pub/ground/
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/

SOFTWARE:
Apple Corp. System 6.0.1
http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n10078

HARDWARE/SOFTWARE MAILORDER:
Alltech
http://www.allelec.com/

ByteWorks
http://www.hypermall.com/byteworks/byteworks.htm

HARDWARE AQUISITIONS:
eBay
http://www.ebay.com