Re: what OS should I use on an IIe hard disk

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Robert Collet" <collet@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>First some background:
>
>    The guy I worked for this summer used to teach electronics at a public
>school and was like their main computer guy. Consequently, he knows just
>about everything about the IIe. Anyways, we used to talk tech about the IIe,
>and he would every once in awhile talk about his apple II setup, which
>included, among other things, an 80 meg MFM hard disk and "enough memory  to
>run appleworks completly from ramdisk" However, at the time he was living in
>temporary residency and left the IIe back at home.         Well, yesterday I
>found out he was moving up perminently and offered to give me all of his IIe
>stuff, which he said comes to about 1000 pounds :).(when I get all of this
>stuff, which might be as soon as this monday, I'll post a summary of it)  Of
>course his setup will replace the IIe I use, and I plan to put all my games
>and whatnot on the hard disk. I know that I cant use  DOS 3.3 (which most of
>my games use) on a hard disk , so I guess I'll have to use prodos.
>
>    I read the FAQs but I still have a few questions:
>1. Whats the best  version of prodos for a IIe?

ProDOS 8 version 2.0.3.

>2. Generally, how compatible is prodos with dos 3.3 ,especially games.

If the game is a single binary file (and sometimes BASIC
file), then it will usually run when converted to ProDOS.
For example, Moon Patrol, Q-Bert, and Dig Dug all under
ProDOS.

If the game is spread over many files, especially with
DOS 3.3 legal but ProDOS illegal file names, then it
won't work.

If a game won't work under ProDOS, you should use
DOS 3.3 Launcher to create a disk image of the DOS
3.3 game and run the entire image off the hard drive.

I'm not sure where to get DOS 3.3 Launcher.  Others
can point the way.

>3. Can I run prodos programs from a GEOS environment? if not, is there any
>GEOS or GS/OS type GUI that I could use?

Yes, you can run ProDOS programs from GEOS.
GEOS, like GS/OS on the IIGS or MacOS on the
Mac or Windows 95 on a PC, is mainly intended
to run its own software.  However, like IIGS running
ProDOS software or PC users running DOS programs,
it can also be used to launch ProDOS programs.

ProDOS programs have generic looking icons
under GEOS.

Another hint with GEOS: it can be used to expand
the root directory of a ProDOS disk past 51 files.
Once you copy more than 51 files from other
ProDOS disks to a new ProDOS disk's root
directory using GEOS, those 51+ files will be
accessable from regular ProDOS programs!  This
is great for converting DOS 3.3 disks since DOS
3.3 allows more than 51 files in the root directory
(because DOS 3.3 does not support folders or
subdirectories).  Just don't put lowercase in the
filenames or ProDOS can't touch them!

>I dont know if this is the right place to ask, but I do have a spare
>internal MFM hard disk that looks like it came out of a PC XT (except its
>half sized)
>
>I doubt the hard card for the IIe can be plugged directly into it, but are
>there any schematics on how to plug an internal MFM hard disk into the
>external plug?

The Focus hardcard made by http://www.allelec.com/
Alltech Electronics for the IIe is an IDE controller,
so you need to replace it with a 2.5" IDE hard drive
(found in PC notebooks).  MFM is a little old, even
for the Apple II.  ;-)