Conflicts with floppy? Where do I start?

[savant42 <jbrashars@gmail.com>]

Greetings,

I just adopted a //e off of Craigslist and have fallen back in love.
Bootstrapping ADTPro over serial works fairly well, except when it
comes to writing ADTPro back out onto floppy.

The machine came with a duo; when I turn her on I don't get the
"chunking" sound from the duo, only a "whir", and the red lights only
flashed on for a moment. I tried a handful of 5.25s labled
"startup" (ProDos, AW, etc) and none booted. So I picked up a disk ]
[ for $5 with the appropriate card. Still no dice on booting any of
the 10 or so floppies I tried. I bootstrapped the ADTPro client and
attempted to copy it to the floppy drive. ADTPro still claims there
are two disk drives, not sure if it's supposed to, but it thinks
they're both empty. I attempt to format anyway, selecting Slot 6 Disk
1 (the card is, in fact, in slot 6) and there is definitely drive
activity, but then ADTPro complains that I need to check that there's
a disk in the drive, and that the drive door is closed, or something
to that effect. I tried removing the Applied Engineering RAM MASTER
III from the aux port, same bug.

How should I begin troubleshooting this? I'm afraid it's been at least
15 years since I've used an Apple II, so I'm basically a newb all over
again. Is there any way to send arbitrary disk images over ADTPro
(serial) instead of the ADTPro client? Obviously this is less than
ideal, I'd rather have the option of floppies, but I'll take that over
nothing at all.

For what it's worth, I've also got a Super Serial card in slot 2, and
some sort of Time card (has a battery pack, 3.6v iirc) in slot 4 or
5.

How strict is the Apple about placement of components in certain
slots? Obviously the AW 80 column/memory card is only going to go in
the AUX slot, but what about the others?

I hope this is fixable, I can't live with a broken heart after
rediscovering true love.

Best regards,

sav