Re: apple 2gs

[pubpc1@library.ucla.edu]

leah <Lcham@concentric.net> wrote:
>I recently purchased a IIgs used from a gentleman who kept the original
>boxes, packing materials, new apple owner stickers, upgrade boxes etc.
>I am still wading through the disks and trying to understand how to
>operate a machine with 512k built in memory with a whopping 512k added
>to it.  The manuals are fantastic, 29 PAGES on a 3.5 disk drive?!?!?!?

More memory is better.  At least 4MB, with 8MB being ideal.  Memory
options available from Alltech and Sequential.

See http://www.allelec.com/
and http://www.sequential.com/

>
>Just thought I would share that with those of you who are into original
>packaging.
>
>My son and I went throught the tutorial together and had fun running the
>mouse off the road.
>
>I still have not figured out how to run the disk action games and am
>wondering if they might have been erased somehow.

You might need to boot the System Disk first.  Not all programs are
self-booting.


>
>Questions.  Can I format my IBMclones 1.44mb 3.5s on the 3.5 mb hard
>drive?

You can use IBM floppy and hard drives on this computer, but you need
the right controller cards.  Specifically, you'll need a BlueDisk
controller for using PC floppy drives and either a Turbodisk IDE,
a MicroDrive, or a Focus controller card for using your IDE 3.5"
hard disk.


>and why did I download an apple emulator?  Will this help me transfer
>files to my IIgs.   And how do I add a hard drive?

Plug in a controller card (SCSI or IDE) to one of the slots and connect
an external hard disk to it or get a "hard card." See Sequential and
Alltech (URL's in first paragraph of this reply).


>What am I looking for?  How big do I go?

Either a hard drive on a card or a controller card plus an external
drive.  SCSI is more flexible than IDE.

The bigger the drive the better.  A 100MB drive is cramped, 300MB is a
logical minimum, 1GB or greater SCSI drives are the best.


>
>This coming from a beamerhead with 96mbram.  I just installed a second
>hard drive to my beamerbot and lived through the partitions.

Luckily, the Apple will consider 8MB to be lots of room for software to
play...


>I am a little kibbiddled over this apple however, I opened the hood and
>everything was labeled (sound chip, etc.) so that was fun but now how to
>fill in those empty slots is there any way to have the machine recognize
>14 slots?

There's only 7 slots.


>and how do I add more RAM or ROM.

Get a RAM card from Alltech or Sequential.  Alltech's uses SIMMs while
Sequentials uses DIPs.

To add more ROM, you will need a RAMkeeper card.  The RAMkeeper lets you
use two banks of 8MB memory, 8MB as RAM and 8MB as ROM for a total of
16MB.  Neat card, but not made anymore so you'll need to look to used
sources.


>Is there any way to retrofit a jazz drive and have it read on my clone
>and also have it connect to my gs?

Yes, you need an SCSI card for the gs (from Alltech or Sequential) and
Peter Watson's MS-DOS utilities on the gs.  With these utilities, your
gs will read and write PC clone formatted Jazz disks.


>Anyhow sounds like fun, and until my son is out of  a school system
>which uses IIgs's make mine
>an APPLE.

Amen.


-Scott G.