Re: newbie with many questions...please help

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Brian Carpenter <bcarpenter@barkingshins.com> wrote:

> I have had this Apple IIGS (ROM 01) in my closet now for over four years.
> Last weekend I decided to pull it out and try to resurrect it.  It has no
> hard drive, 3.5" and 5.25" drives (both seem to work great) and 512k RAM.
> Well, as you might have guessed, I am having many problems...many of them
> are not addressed in the FAQs that I have found.  Here are the two big ones:
> 
> 1.  I only have System Disk ver. 1.1 and so I downloaded the file
> Apple_II_System_Disk_3.2.sea.bin from Apple.com and am having some trouble
> getting a usable disk made from this image.  I used a friend's Mac running
> MacOS 8.5 and Disk Copy 6.3.3 to create the System Disk 3.2 but every time I
> try to boot the IIGS with this disk I get "UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS".  Have
> tried several different disks that I know are good disks (double-density,
> double-sided).    Don't know what else to try.  Any help would be
> appreciated.

The .sea actually contains a Disk Copy 4.2 disk image, so you might like
to try that instead of Disk Copy 6.3.3 (which supports both its own and
the older disk image formats).  I've heard reports that recent versions
of Disk Copy aren't very good at creating ProDOS disks from images, but
haven't tried doing this myself.

By the way: "Apple II System Disk 3.2" is the last version of the 8-bit
Apple II system disk.  It will work on the IIgs, but it only lets you
run 8-bit software.

As far as I can tell, it is an 800K disk image, and the Mac is quite
happy to mount it as a ProDOS volume.  It is only about 25% full (the
original disk was actually a 5.25").

The disk image works fine with Bernie to the Rescue (it boots into a
startup menu), so any problems must be to do with the process of
creating a real floppy disk.

Apart from the issue of the Disk Copy version, there might also be a
problem with the reliability of 800K disk support with the late model
3.5" drive ("manual inject" type).  Using an older machine (mid to late
model 68K) with an "auto inject" type of 3.5" drive should help with
this.

> 2.  I downloaded and attempted to use ShrinkIt 1.1, but every time I try to
> run it the system reboots and then tells me that it was unable to run the
> program.

That is actually the IIgs native version of ShrinkIt, which is called
ShrinkIt GS.  Apple appears to have shortened the name.

ShrinkIt GS 1.1 requires System 5.0 or later (which uses the GS/OS
operating system; you only have an early version of ProDOS-16).  You
will need at least 1 MB of RAM to run System 5.0.

> As I understand the FAQs that I have read I am going to need to get
> ShrinkIt to work to install any kind of term software and transfer files
> from my Linux and win98 boxes via Null Modem cable.  Any help on this
> would also be appreciated.

You can get the 8-bit version of ShrinkIt (about version 3.4, if my
memory is correct), or even IIPlus.Unshrink (version 2.01, I think),
both of which will run on the IIgs and will allow you to unshrink 8-bit
software.  The IIgs native version is much nicer, and it is required if
you want to unshrink 16-bit software that uses resource forks, but you
won't be able to use any of this until you are running System 5.0 or
later.

Have a look for some of the other FTP sites for the Apple II and see if
you can locate ShrinkIt or IIPlus.Unshrink on one of them.