Re: II GS help/easy one

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article "Scott H" <sheynde@pacifier.com> writes...

>    I am a teacher and had an Apple II GS donated to our class. It will only
>boot to a purple-bordered screen

    It sounds like someone has played with the preference settings
that can be set using the Control Panel (this can be accessed by
pressing and holding down the keys: Apple-Control-Esc). Should you
just want to clear everything back to the default settings, turn
on the machine while holding down the 'Option' key--when the menu
appears, select option 2 by pressing the '2' key.

>that says something about system disc or whatever.

    You need to describe this message in more detail. Does it say
"Check Startup Device" with a sliding apple, or perhaps a message
stating "UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS"?

    Does it give you a message saying "GS/OS requires ROM version
01 or higher. Please see your dealer for a free upgrade"?

>I went to the official Apple site, found a set of 7 system discs I
>could download, but none would get me past the dreaded screen described
>above.
>    Is there a master boot disc I am not finding, or some other solution?
>Thanks, Scott

    "System Disk" and "Installer" are the only two directly bootable
disks (as a side note, the complete System 6.0.1 set of disks comes
on six 800K floppy disks, the seventh is only require for starting
from an AppleTalk network or something related. The disks "Fonts"
and "synthLAB" are non-essential, and "System Disk" can be created
using the Installer disk).

    In order to use System 6.0.1 however, you must have a ROM 01 or
ROM 3 (if you do, you'll see it reported on the lower half of the
screen with a copyright notice when you turn on the machine) and
at least 1.125 megabytes of RAM.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca