Re: IIgs RAM drive question

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

Randy Shackelford <shack@southwind.net> wrote:

> Apple was obsessed with having the 3.5" in slot 5 for some dumb reason.

A very good reason, actually.  It has to be in slot 4, 5 or 6 to work
with Apple II Pascal, which has hard-coded slot assignments for standard
devices: slot 1 for the printer, slot 2 for the modem, slot 3 for a
"terminal" (the 80-column card), and standard disk controllers in slots
4 through 6.  Slot 7 is not assigned, and can be used for a custom
device.

I'm not sure what the situation is with mouse support under Pascal (it
wasn't a standard feature).  I expect this was done through a loaded
driver which can handle the mouse being in any slot.

Pascal 1.2 and earlier only support 5.25" drives, but Pascal 1.3
(released around 1983, I think) added support for most devices with a
ProDOS block driver in the firmware, i.e. standard slot RAM cards, 3.5"
controllers, SCSI cards, etc.

> They even moved the mouse to slot 7 and the slinky to slot 4 on memory
> expandable //c's to keep it there.

In this case the reason was the same - Pascal needed the RAM card to be
in slot 4 through 6 to be able to access it as a disk volume.  The mouse
could go anywhere, so it got tossed over to slot 7.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P O Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand