Apple //c and Word processing

[minnebo@probe.acs.oakland.edu (Brian P. Minnebo)]

Greetings,

Background:

 - Sister inlaw gets apple //c at garage sale for $7 (hardware only, no
   software/disks/manuals), seller claims it doesn't work, she asks me
   to look at it.
 - Sister inlaw hopes her Mom can use it as a workprocessor.
 - I got the apple faq and read it.
 - As far as I can tell, the sellers disks probably went bad.  If I press
   control-reset it goes into basic and works ok.  (the print peek(xxxxx) )
   tip in the fact reports back with "255", which means it is an early
   //c.
 - In the faq, it mentions <CTRL><OPEN-APPLE><CLOSED-APPLE><RESET> to
   start the system test, and to watch der blinkin lights.  Well, I did
   that (for a long time I watched der blinkin lights), and eventually it
   appears to repeat the patterns on the screen.  Does this mean every
   thing is ok?  if not, then what exactly is the expected test pattern?

Questions:

 - Aside from tearing it apart (I did this), how can I tell how much
   memory it has?  it appears to have 16 memory chips, or at least,
   all the chip sockets were full.  I forget the chip # of course, and
   exaclty how many sockets there were (either 8 or 16).

 - When I turn it on the disk drives kicks in, the machine beeps and 
   and displays "Check disk drive".  Does this mean "check and make sure
   you have a bootable disk in the drive" or "I think the disk drive is
   broken, better check it out"?   My guess is the former, and that the
   drive is ok.

 - Assuming the drive IS ok,  what will I need to get it to do any
   word processing?  I've heard (on this newsgroup/list) that AppleWriter
   is now freely available and/or shareware.  Can I do anything useful
   with just the 5 1/4" drive?

 - If so, does it (AppleWriter) live on a bootable disk, or do I need a
   seperate bootable disk, and an AppleWriter disk, and a data disk, or
   some comibination of the three mentioned above?

 - And finally, how do I get initial copies of software, and what kind
   of disks does it want (Double Sided Double density  etc)

Much thanks in advance.

Brian