Re: Harddrive on a II+???

[casa@unm.edu (Jim Pittman)]

Hope all of you will pardon me if I have the temerity to discuss
an Apple II topic here in the "I Hate/Love/Envy iMacs" newsgroup.

Charles J. Sarchet wrote:

> Subject: Harddrive on a II+??? Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999
>
> From: "Charles J. Sarchet" <csarchet@sinclair.net>
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
>
> Is it possible to attach a harddrive to a II or a II+? I seem to
> remember the issue being that certain versions of ProDOS would not
> work on anything other than a enhanced //e.

You certainly can. There are limitations, though.

> I was goofing around and pulled the hard drive out of my //e and
> stuck it in my II+ to check it out, and sure enough the version of
> ProDOS on the harddrive was friendly enough to inform me that I
> needed an enhanced //e.

You need to use an older version of ProDOS because later versions
require a 65C02 and possibly other hardware found on an enhanced
Apple IIe or IIgs.

> So now I am wondering if there is or there has ever been a work
> around like useing an older version of ProDOS or something that
> would allow me to attach a harddrive to the II+.
>
> Just an idea I am toying with. Any help would be greatly
> appreciated. Meanwhile, I search the FAQs.

I have a Focus 20-meg hard-drive-on-a-card from Alltech in slot 7 of
my 1980 Apple II Plus. It has ProDOS version 1.9 on it and a couple
of ProDOS applications such as a patched version of AppleWorks and
Copy II Plus. I wrote a simple HELLO program to act as a menu-driven
program selector and it resides on a DOS 3.3 disk in Slot 6 Drive 1.
When the computer starts up, the disk in Slot 6 Drive 1 boots up to
the menu. One item on the menu starts up a binary copy of Super-Text,
a DOS 3.3 word processor. Another menu item starts up Softerm-2, a
DOS 3.3 terminal emulation program. Another menu item boots the hard
drive in Slot 7.

When I select "Boot Focus Drive in Slot 7" another BASIC startup
program on the Focus hard drive runs. Its menu lets me select either
AppleWorks or Copy II Plus or whatever else I have on the hard drive.

Problems:

There are precious few ProDOS-based applications that will run on an
Apple II Plus, even with a 1-meg memory card (mine is from Cir-Tech),
a keyboard enhancer and an 80-column card (mine are from Videx). I
finally was able to get the Videx-patched version of AppleWorks to
run, but the keyboard is awkward and the program crashes a lot, so
it's just not very useful. Copy II Plus version 8.x works fine.

The Focus drive won't boot by itself, requiring the Slot 6 "pre-boot"
disk. This is not a big deal; I could have written the BASIC selector
program to just boot Slot 7 without stopping to ask. Or, you could
just go to the BASIC prompt and type PR#7 <RETURN> to start the drive.

But, if you have an Apple II Plus and one or more ProDOS applications
that can work with ProDOS version 1.9 the Focus drive is the way to go.

Jim Pittman - AppleQuerque Computer Club - where owners/users of real
Apple II computers are an endangered species now. casa AT unm DOT edu

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