Re: A2 Disk boot problems

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

: Timothy L. Trimble wrote:
: > 
: > When I plug in my controler card for the disk drives and then turn on the
: > Apple II, the drive comes on and continues to spin.  The prompt never
: > appears on the screen.  When I remove the controler card then the Apple
: > starts up fine with the prompt.  Any ideas what I may be doing wrong?  It
: > seems like the apple is locked into some kind of disk mode when the
: > controler card is in.  I've tried another controler card and drive with the
: > same results.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

And Jack Friess (jfriess@wctc.net) responded:
: Your drive and controller are probably operating just fine.  When you 
: boot an Apple with a drive controller card (which is best in slot #6), it 
: will look for DOS (Disk Operating System) to load off the disk and into 
: RAM.  Otherwise, it will not know how to communicated with I/O devices, 
: especially your disk drive(s).

(BEGIN PEDANTIC MODE)
On the Apple ][, the only thing that DOS or ProDOS tells the computer how
to communicate with is disks.  Without DOS, the computer will not know how
to communicate with disks, but it can still communicate with other I/O
devices.  Most interface cards have enough data on-board to communicate
with the computer by means of the I/O hooks, but in the case of the disk
controller, the controller card only has enough information to start the
boot process...the rest has to come from DOS or ProDOS...and besides, DOS
or BASIC.SYSTEM provides the command handler anyway.
(END PEDANTIC MODE)

That said, except for a couple of words in the offending paragraph above,
everything that Jack said is correct....

: You need a DOS or ProDOS (operating system) formated disk with DOS 3.x or 
: ProDOS 8  file and at least the BASIC.SYSTEM file on it in the drive with 
: the door closed at power-up.  Most commercially available applications 
: will be set-up to take care of installing the proper software it needs to 
: operate properly, including DOS or ProDOS.  If you don't have a disk in 
: the drive at power-up, can stop your drive from running by pressing 
: control-reset--this will give you the same prompt you had when booting 
: without your controller card installed--but then, you won't be able to 
: access your disk drive(s).

: Stay tuned and Nathan M. will probably refer you to more information in 
: the Apple II FAQ's, which I encourage you to look over--I find them very 
: helpful myself.

: Jack Friess
: Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA

--Dave Althoff, ][.
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