Re: Boot Dos3.3 progs/games from .dsk image on HD? (REAL IIgs)?

["william strutts" <wrstrutts1@home.com>]

"Mitchell Spector" <a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote in message
3b4eae41.1237027@newsflash.concordia.ca">news:3b4eae41.1237027@newsflash.concordia.ca...
> "william strutts" <wrstrutts1@home.com> wrote:
>
>
>     I seriously considered the C64 in the early 80's--especially
> because of its graphic, animation and sound capabilities, but
> ended up going the Apple II route. In retrospect I feel it was
> the better path, I enjoyed games just as much as my friends
> with C64's (I was envious of the sound mind you!) and it didn't
> take an eternity waiting for them to load! :)

I had a couple of friends in college with C64's and they had
nice games.  They were not inherently business machines
althought the local Commodore store in Flint used one up
until the mid-90's to run his cash register.  I might have gotten
an Apple II were they cheaper but as a poor college kid
with limited funds...

>     The real advantage was the expendability, being able to
> plug in cards to extend its features over the years. Though
> what I really value looking back now, was being able to open
> the system up; both satisfying my curiosity about the electronics
> inside AND handling and tinkering with the hardware inside.
> I learned more about hardware than friends with Commodores.
> The C64 may have been nice game system, but they were as
> closed up as a Nintendo (granted with a bit more expandability,
> but they still came off as glorified game systems to most kids).

There were Coco nuts out there who used to invent all kinds of
neat add-ons for the Color Computer.  They had Hard Disk
controllers, 80-column cards, sound cards, serial cards, parallel
cards etc The Coco had a real floppy controller unlike the C64
and stuff loaded real quickly on my computer.  I even used a
multitasking OS on my computer called OS-9.  It was loosely
based on Unix and it could do all kinds of cool stuff.  They had
Pascal, an advanced BASIC, and C compilers for it.  That came
in handy in college.  Plus you could get an external expansion
chassis with four or five slots to put all of your cards.

> >but an Amiga would be way cool. :-)  I always wanted one but it was
> >supported by Commodore. :-/
>
>     Thinking back, I may have been better off going from my
> Apple II Plus to an Amiga rather than the IIgs. One big reason
> was third party support and software, I was struggling to find
> software and other GS users as far back as late 1987, and
> it just got worse with each year (until I found the Internet by
> around 1991-92). Apple pretty much abandoned the system
> a year or two after I bought it, and it wasn't cheap either.

I had decided that the Apple Macintosh was the way to go.
I was impressed with the Desktop Publishing things that it could
do and the solid feel that Finder gave me.  It didn't crash as
often as my friends Amiga's did.  I used to put out professional
looking documents on my Mac Plus with my Deskwriter. I always
got good reviews from potential employers on my Resumes.
With the Mac Plus, I had true Plug N Play long before Billy
decided that his OS would get it.  At worst, you might have had
to drop a file into your system folder.  No nightmarish interrupts,
jumpers and config files to set up.  Mac users were better off
as far as support since we had taken over most of the Apple
II user groups. Sorry.  The Flint group here still exist as a
Mac group.  I once met Guy Kawasaki at a MUG meeting in
Worcester Mass when he was attending MacWorld Expo.

>     An Amiga would have cost me about a third the price, had
> support from the beginning well through to the mid 90's (and
> even continuing on today somewhat) and I would have had
> a more powerful system in several respects. Not that I dislike
> the IIgs, it was and still is a very cool machine, only it was
> prevented from being what it could have been because of
> Apple. The Amiga suffered because of Commodore too, but
> at least the system wasn't purposely crippled and overpriced.

My Amiga friends complained about Commodore support but
there was a lot of third-party support.  There is even a group
which is trying to resurrect the Amiga Workbench and is trying
to establish a hardware platform for it to work on.  I guess they
are porting it over to the Intel architecture.

> >I myself started on the TRS-80 Coco 1 & 3's
> >then moved to the Mac Plus.
>
>     I actually have a CoCo 3 in my collection. I'm tempted to
> find a floppy drive since it has such impressive sounding
> features.

You will need a Floppy Controller and disk drive.  There is a guy
on the OS9/Coco Delphi forum selling controllers and disk drives.
You might want to check it out if you're interested.

>
>     I generally despised PC's during the era between 1990 and 1994.
> Windows 3.11, MCGA (blocky) graphics and AdLib/FM didn't exactly
> win me over. Apart from a lack of software support, I always felt my
> Apple IIgs made a nice alternative back then.
>
I worked at GM which didn't abandon Windows 3.1 until sometime
in 1998 or 1999.  I hated Windows 3.1. Its memory management
was abismal and it would constantly crash not that Windows 9x
is much better.  At least the interface is decent but you know what
they say about its version of plug n play...Plug N Pray.

>     It wasn't until Windows 95 was introduced, along with wavetable
> synthesis and machines fast enough to handle VGA/SVGA modes
> that I felt the time was right to move on. Of course I was still quite
> stubborn, I continued to stick with my IIgs as my only system right
> up until early 1997. Even then I still was hesitant to adopt the PC
> as a main platform. I guess my fondness for Apple II's still hasn't
> worn off as I never retired my GS and keep it on my desk (and
> running!) to this very day.

I used to get on the internet in my Mac Plus right up until 1996 when
I moved to the PC platform.  I had an AOL account which had a
primitive internet browser built in.  I could perouse newsgroups but
it was rather difficult to find one you were interested in because
they had a clunky interface.
--
--
William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@home.com - Whatever!

C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts

Just hacking away...