Linards Ticmanis wrote:
heliboy2003@yahoo.com.tw wrote:Hi, I've received my CFFA card couple of months ago but didn't have time to play with until this week. After reading the user manual, I am very confused. The manual says that the CF card needs to be formatted, but how? It says that I need to use Copy ][+ or Apple System Utilities to format the CF card, but how can I run the Copy ][+? (I have an Apple ] [e without any Floppy drive). Does that mean I have to get a working Floppy Drive and found a Copy ][+ diskette to format the CF on my Apple ][ then I can use CFFA?
See the ADTPro project for methods to bootstrap the Apple from external sources. Technically, you could run the 2e with only the CFFA but you would be missing out on some great software, IMHO. I think you will find that floppy disks are very useful with the Apple II systems. Especially backing up the data on your CFFA card.
5.25 disks should be fairly cheap and easily attainable. You will also need the matching controller card and cable.
3.5 drives may be a bit different. The drives themselves are usually easy to get but the controller card may not be that easy to find.
If you have a CF reader for a PC, it's probably possible to format the card on the PC with CiderPress, then copy ProDOS to it. This way you would not need a floppy drive. I don't know the exact details though as I personally don't own a CFFA (yet). Especially I'm not sure if CiderPress can do the partitioning that's needed for CF cards greater than 32MB. Anyone?
On my CFFA with a 256mb memory I had to use the CFFA to partition the card. From this point I let the Apple boot up to ProDOS to format the partitions. All very quick and (hopefully) painless.
One benefit, among many, when using Ciderpress is it's ability to convert disk images to archives and archives to disk images. Really cool stuff.
Another question, I have totally no idea on how Apple Dos or ProDos works, if I have the CF card formatted OK, can I put the Disk ROM images (.dsk, .po or .nib) found on the web to the CF card and run it?
Best thing to do is Google, read these groups and most importantly, read the FAQ. I think this is current.
http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/A2FAQs5MAINHALL.html Cheers. Mike T