Re: HELP: Apple IIe hardware questions

[Bryan Villados <news001@macgeek.org>]

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In article <3g0E3.15546$1E2.106900@ozemail.com.au>, mingle
<maiau@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to the IIe (picked one up last week). It's a late-model IIe (1986)
> with
> colour composite monitor, mouse and 5.25" single floppy drive, but with no
> manual or software.
> 
> I have a few questions, to which I couldn't find any simple answers:
> 
> 1: There's a flat black toggle switch under the front of the keyboard, near
> to
> the right-hand side. It attaches to a two-pin header on the front of the
> motherboard. What function does it perform?
> 

Hmm... My original Apple //e or my Platinum IIe doesn't have that
switch. Sounds like an add-on. Maybe someone else would know!

> 2: Inside, it has a number of expansion cards fitted. Once if which is
> labelled
> "64K RAM/80 Column Card". How do I activate 80 column mode from within
> BASIC?
> Which commands can I use to change text colour from within BASIC?

To switch to 80-column video, you'd type "IN#3", then hit return. If
you were in BASIC, you could either do:

10 IN#3

or

10 PRINT CHR$(4);"IN#3"

The later does it using DOS.

To change the color of text... You can't in text mode or graphics (GR)
mode, but you can in high-resolution (HGR) or HGR2 modes. My memory of
coloring text in HGR or HGR2 is faded, so someone else would need to
help you with that.

> 3: When I switch it on, the floppy drive rattles away and seems to look for
> a
> bootable disk. When I hit CTRL-Reset it drops into BASIC. How do I format a
> floppy disk/perform a directory on a disk?
>

Unfortunately, you need to load an operating system to initialize a
disk. You would need to locate a boot disk with either DOS 3.3 or
ProDOS System Disk. If you boot with DOS 3.3, you can initialize a disk
by removing the boot disk, insert a blank disk, then type in the
commands (hitting return after each line):

NEW
INIT HELLO,S6,D1

That will initialize the disk in Drive 1 that's connected to a disk
controller at slot #6. And the boot program that it'll run is an
Applesoft program called "Hello", which will contain nothing seeing you
erased the memory with the NEW command.

Watch out because the INIT command won't give you any kind of warning!
So always write protect your DOS or ProDOS boot disks. If you boot with
ProDOS, you need to get into the System Utilities, then select the
"Initialize a disk" option. You can purchase both DOS 3.3 and ProDOS
from ByteWorks <http://www.byteworks.org/>. The manuals they come with
will be important to have.

> (If anyone can point me to a FAQ or suitable website, that would be great)

You can find the Apple II FAQ at:

<http://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/>

or

<ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/>