Re: Franklin Ace

[John Le Febvre <John@klatch.demon.co.uk>]

In article: <5doni6$610@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>  cheer@i.hate.spam (Christopher D. Heer) writes:
> There were several models of the Franklin ACE, but they'd boot a standard DOS 
> 3.3 disk.
> 
> ProDOS, on the other hand, required a hack (the details of which escape me; it 
> was so very long ago. . . ).  

I found this from a post dated around 15/1/96

---- begin quote

 Pfaiffer@mbnet.Mb.Ca writes:

>PMC(|  A member of our user group has a clone (not a Laser but a
> clone). He can't get ProDOS8 to boot properly. DOS 3.3 works
> fine. Would someone have patches to fix ProDOS8 to work on his
> machine? At present he would be happy to get ANYTHING to run.

    This sounds like the same problem some Franklin owners have reported.
Evidently ProDOS contains a test which ends up rejecting many Apple II
clones. There is a byte sequence-- in all the versions I've checked so
far-- which seems to be critical:
69 0B D0 03.

    To fix the booting problem, try this:

 Start Copy II+

 Select "Sector Editor"

 Swap-in the ProDOS diskette

 READ track 0, sector 0

 Search for (Hex bytes): 69 0B D0 03

 When you find the above, change D0 03 to EA EA
    and write the changed sector back to diskette.

 Check the patched ProDOS diskette by booting it.

---- end quote

Hope this helps!
-- 
John.
john@klatch.demon.co.uk