Re: Last version of Apple II GEOS?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

tturner@ecn.ab.ca () wrote:

>Supertimer (supertimer@aol.com) wrote:
><snip>
>: Sadly, all versions require double hires and 128k.  That
>: means a minimum of an Apple IIc or an enhanced 128k
>: However, even that kind of setup will be SLOW.
>
>: The ideal setup to run it on is a bare bones IIGS.
>
>: A bare bones IIGS does not run GS/OS very well,
>
>: But if your IIGS has enough memory and a hard
>: drive, it is safe to say that even without an accelerator,
>: GS/OS is a much more powerful and fun OS than
><snip>
>
>I'm not about to argue (much) in this regard; as I do not
>consider myself to be an A2 GEOS `expert' - however; I do
>run GEOS on my A2E, with a rocket chip and 1meg expansion
>RAM that GEOS recognizes. I also have a 10meg Sider, that
>GEOS recognizes - but only when I boot from a GEOS floppy.

Nice system.  I did not mean to imply that accelerated
and memory expanded IIes were not fast enough.
In fact, that's basically what a stock IIGS is.

I've run GEOS on an accelerated 1MB 8-bit system
before and it was great.  Like you, I was not able
to install the software on a hard drive (an SCSI hard
drive in my case) by hitting the 'H' key on startup.
I don't know why.

>I can copy GEOS to my HD, but it will _NOT_ run.

Same here.

>Since my
>GEOS floppies are `unstamped' (as you put it) - I beg to
>differ as to why GEOS will never be considered an acceptable
>alternative OS for the A2 line: the real reason is that it

You mean you didn't have to enter your name the
first time you started GEOS?  I guess they must have
released a version of GEOS after mine.

That is great!  If so, copies of this version of GEOS
can serve to be the distribution version if GEOS is
reclassified as freeware.

>cannot operate as the OS on the HD; cannot operate unless
>it _IS_ the OS and therefore must boot from floppy (I'm not
>about to leave the formatting of my HD to the unknown
>capabilities/capacities of another unsupported OS - especially
>when my HD is partitioned with DOS, ProDOS, CP/M & Pascal).

Too bad you don't have another Sider you could try.
I'd love to see if the 'H' install really works.  When I
was an active GEOS user, I was willing to risk my HD
so I hit the 'H' on startup, but GEOS did not seem to
see my SCSI hard drive.  I always thought that it was
probably looking for an older drive like a Sider.

Now if another Sider user could be found who has
a drive to spare, he or she could install GEOS with
the 'H' procedure, which according to the manual
generates the GEOS.SYSTEM file.  Maybe we can
all get copies then and thus be able to boot from
another OS!

I've stopped using GEOS since my 5.25" drive died.
Can't boot the 5.25" system disk.  If the 'H' install
had worked, I'd have been able to chuck the 5.25"
drive and still use the OS.