Re: Is any IIgs capable?

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 23 May 2000 23:27:48 +0100, Ruud Dingemans
<rdingema@xs4all.nl> wrote:

>After some struggling I've now been able to get my IIgs to run
>(properly). AppleWorks, ProDOS, etc. all work fine. I picked this
>machine up recently for about $ 25 including drive & monitor (which
>seems decent).

Good to hear!

>Now, I've been reading up on IIgs matters, but am still left with some
>questions. Maybe some of you experts are able to answer these.
>
>The machine is a ROM 00 IIGS, 3.5 and 5.25 drives, with a memory card having
>256K on it, giving a total of 512 K.  It's a nice little thingie.

If it is a ROM 0 then you will need to get some replacement chips to
upgrade that machine to a ROM 1 (this might require replacing the VGC
graphics controller chip as well) if you really want to be able to use
that machine as a IIgs rather than just a fancy IIe.  You'll also want
some more memory and if you are really want to play with the best
software available for it you'll also need a hard drive.

Alltech electronics may have everything you need.  You can check out
their web site at:

     http://www.allelec.com

>Now I wonder:
>
>A) Am I going to be able to network it? ROM 00 seems to be a huge restriction,
>and I doubt there are sources where one can still buy a 01 or 03 (are there?).
>
>On the other hand, why would Apple have released a machine with built-in
>Appletalk support if you weren't able to use this (at first)? Maybe it
>was *possible* with older versions.

If you are only running ProDOS 8 right now, you should still be able
to use AppleTalk but you need to add one or more files to your boot
disk to allow your machine to see any shared drives.  One of the files
is called ATINIT but I'm unsure about what you need to do to get this
to work as I've never done it myself.

>Which leads to my next question:
>
>B) Are things like IIGS System 3.2 and 5.0.4 (which may be able to boot
>on this 512K machine) online somewhere? I wonder if there is any ol'
>version of the
>System/Finder software which would give me a GUI and maybe Appletalk on
>this machine.

The only place that I think has a license to distribute the Apple II
operating systems online legally is Delphi.  Apple itself only has the
latest operating systems available from their site and I'm not sure
what older versions, if any, that Delphi currently has.

There are other ways of getting the operating systems, though, such as
a local users group.

>And
>
>C) I've read that it is possible to boot IIGSes from the network if you
>have AppleShare 2 or 3 (which I do, and several Macs to run it on). Can
>this be done, and if so, what would I need to do?

Again, I'm not entirely sure but I know that on Apple's site there is
a seventh disk included with System 6.0.1 which is for use on a Mac to
allow booting System 6.0.1 over AppleTalk.  I think that support for
booting older system software might already be included with
AppleShare but I'm not entirely sure.

>D) I also have a keen interest in GEOS for the Apple II; I used to run
>this on
>my C64 and was suitably impressed. Is this old version online somewhere?

Can't help you on that one at all.  I was never impressed with GEOS.

>E) I have a Z80 card in Slot 4 (labeled 'A..OE soft card'), but booting
>the 'softcard.zip' files from the Net (on 3.5 inch disks) doesn't seem
>to do anything. Any ideas?

That card is for running the CP/M operating system.  The zip file
probably contains disk images of the disks to get it running however
many of the Z80 cards required specific disks to get them running so
that file still might not have the software you need.

Sorry for all the less than confident answers but I hope I've at least
given you some help.  :-)

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| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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