Re: Is it true that Apple computers can run MS DOS?

[jcoffey@crl.com (James L. Coffey)]

Salvatore Buttice (qsilver@moose.erie.net) wrote:
: The STOCK AppleII could not run MSDOS, but there was a card produced by 
: the now defunct Applied Engineering that was kind of an IBM on a card. It 

It was called the PC Transporter, orginally developed by :Little Blue and 
marketted by AE.  As I recall, it was rumored to have been developed with 
Apple's help in order to make the A2 qualify,as an MSDOS machine, for a 
large contract with the DoD (Defense Department) schools.  I sold for 
$500 initially, and was sown around $200 a few years back.

CGA graphics were standard.  Many programs didn't work because the card 
used software for most I/O and programs that expexctd to read or write to 
specific hardware locations, such as a comm port, couldn't find the 
desired location.  The joystick didn't work with it, so most MS DOS games 
were unplayable.

A nice board, though, if all you needed was the ability to read/write MS 
Dos disks and run text basis programs.  I used mine to run MS-Word and 
Quattro Pro so I didn'y have to drag a laptop home from work.

: was only an 8088 or 8086 I think, but it DID work, and according to a 
: friend of mine, faster than an 8086 he had sitting on his desk, and 
: almost as fast as the 80286 he had at work. Something about having the 

I believe it had an NEC V30 runing at 2x a normal IBM PC.

: second microprocessor seemed to make the system run faster, since the 
: 808x didn't have to deal with the peripherals and such. That was taken 
: care of by the 65c816.

Actually, hard drive access time was it's weakpoint.  SInce it emulated a 
PC dirve via a large file on the Apple drive, it a) took up a lot of 
space since you had to leave enough room for all disk space you thought 
you might need; b) it translated the files as it read them.

It also required a special 3.5 drive, or an Apple 3.5 drive attached to 
it in order to read MS Dos disks.  Unfortunately, you couldn't boot from 
the 3.5 attached to it, and reading Apple disks from it was problemattic 
at best.  Many programs refused to run off of my Apple 3.5 when it was 
attached to the PC Transporter.

"Knowledge is Good"  Emil Faber