Re: Apple ][ Plus problem

[hamo@comnets.rwth-aachen.de (Harald Mommer)]

In article <364CA596.EAAAA403@yahoo.com>,
	"Peter R. Bernhardt" <parasang@yahoo.com> writes:

> Since my computing expertise extends basically as far as the pc and its
> clones (with some electronics and repair experience), I am having
> trouble tracing this problem. If I put the DOS 3.3 diskette (I have two
> and both behave the same) in the drive, turn on the monitor and power up
> the computer I get the "Apple ][" message at the top of the screen, the
> disk drive sounds as though it does a few seeks, a beep and the drive
> light stays on as does the drive motor. Nothing else. The floppy
> interface card is in slot 6 as I understand that it should be, but
> trying it in others does little (I get the * prompt and the drive light
> stays on").
> 
> After a normal boot and failure, and I press reset I get into "]" mode.
> Entering "PR#6" causes drive to seek (entering a different value has
> same effect except for 7 and it does nothing).
> 
> If I try using the BASICS diskette (I know it won�t boot using this
> diskette) I get the message "Insert your 13 sector diskette and press
> return". The diskette motor starts after the boot and stays on. Other
> program diskettes put the system into "*" mode.

The message "Insert your 13 sector diskette and press return" comes
from the BASICS-disk. This means, the controller and the drive are
able to read at least this data from disk. So you are not in serious
trouble, I think.

Boot problems are normal for defective or very old media, in the most
cases the Apple crashes into the monitor and you will see the "*" as
prompt with a beep. What you described is perfect normal behaviour for
defective or very old disk media.

I believe you have 2 defective DOS 3.3 disks. Try to get some disks
which are working for sure. This should be the really first thing to
do now.

If this doesn't help, make sure you have an 48K or better
machine. Look into the machine, there should be three rows with eight
4116 RAM chips (or equivalent). If you don't have a 48K machine and
the DOS 3.3 disks are not so called "master disks", the Apple can't
boot. In this case you have to upgrade the RAM of your Apple to
48K. But it is unlikely you have a machine with less than 48K memory,
but maybe someone needed these old RAM chips for something, or the
language card in slot 0 (16K RAM expansion), which normally is
connected with the place of the RAM-chip in the upper left corner of
the board, has been lost and the chip there is missing.  In this case
the machine hasn't the full 48K RAM, and it is unable to boot a DOS
3.3 "slave disk". Look into the machine, this shouldn't do any harm.

Maybe the head of the drive has to be cleaned, try it, this cannot do
any harm to the drive, too.

Last of all, the head could be a little bit deadjusted, so that it can
read your BASICS disk, but not the DOS 3.3 disks. I don't believe
that, and the only advise I can give is not to try to readjust the
drive until you absolutely know you must do it and what you are
doing. I for myself am no expert in adjusting disk drives...

Harald
-- 
Harald Mommer		  | mailto:hamo@comnets.rwth-aachen.de
Communication Networks	  | Aachen University of Technology
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