Re: Modern mass storage options for Apple III

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

David Schmidt <schmidtd@my-deja.com> wrote:
> On 7/10/2011 11:53 PM, Bill W. wrote:
>> I haven't checked to see if the Uthernet has an AIII driver, but even
>> if it did, it would take quite a bit of client software to make
>> something like NAS work.
> 
> ADTPro imbeds an IP stack, and that runs natively on SOS.  But NAS sounds
> a bit far-fetched on the II or the ///.
> 
>> As I understand it, the III ROM exclusively checks for a floppy when
>> booting.  So, the CFFA, the Profile, and other other disk devices
>> require the III to boot from the floppy with an appropriate driver.
>> Thus, even with a CFFA, when the floppy bites the dust, the computer
>> becomes unusable.
>> 
>> Is that right?
> 
> Exactly so.  The CFFA looks just like a bunch of ProFiles.  You still
> need to boot from the first drive, but everything else from that point on
> can come from the hard drive.  I use BOS from Bob Consorti - it is a
> program launcher kind of thing that lets you get at everything from a menu.
> 
> Even if a driver were written for the CFFA3000, I'm not sure there's a
> way the /// could be fooled into booting from it's slot without a ROM modification.

Exactly. 

Fortunately, the disk drives are plentiful. ;-)

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon