Re: Need apple /// help

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

SUPRDAVE <suprdave@aol.comAolsucks> wrote:

> I know this machine is rather off topic but hopefully somebody knows enough
> about it to help me.

I've only briefly used an Apple ///, but I have the owner's manuals and
know a little about it.

> Picked up a /// and a working profile + disks tonight. it boots the
> utilities disk and i was able to list the profile contents (/steve/) but
> that's it. I'm not used to these device drivers, reconfiguring and so
> forth. I just want to get to dos and start using prodos commands and start
> running things by setting the prefix and go, but doesnt seem to work on the
> ///.

I don't think the /// has anything resembling BASIC.SYSTEM.  There is an
"Apple /// Business Basic", but I've never seen it so I don't know what
form it takes.  The beta version of Apple IIgs Basic (never finalised)
was based on /// Business Basic, and the IIgs one does have a command
line, so I imagine the same applies on the ///.

As far as booting is concerned: you have to boot from a 5.25" disk, and
all your device drivers must be installed on the boot disk.  You can run
applications from the ProFile, but can't boot from it.  (The ROM only
contains enough code to support booting the 5.25" drive, and a very
simple monitor program.)

Judging from the owner's manual, it looks like SOS handles offline disks
similarly to GS/OS: the system will ask you to reinsert the system disk
if it needs it.  I imagine it would be clumsy to run an application from
a different disk with a single 5.25" drive.

Every device accessed by SOS needs to have a driver installed on your
system disk.  To do this, you have to run the System Configuration
Program.  The active set of drivers and their settings live in the
SOS.DRIVERS files.

> obviously, the // and /// developers were not the same!

No.  Several ideas from the /// migrated into later Apple II systems,
the main example being ProDOS, of course.  GS/OS also borrows several
concepts from SOS.

> i'm used to prodos8 and dos3.3 where i can swap disks anytime and catalog
> and run programs anytime.

I can't see anything clear about this in the manuals, but it appears you
are supposed to boot from the appropriate disk to run applications on
that disk.  I didn't see any examples which implied there was a standard
program selector, but I assume something sensible happens if you quit
from the utilities.


There is an Apple II emulator, which acts like a 48K Apple II+.  You can
run ProDOS 1.0 or 1.0.1 on this emulator, but not BASIC.SYSTEM.

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