Re: My IIGS Wish List... PLEASE HELP!

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

In article sanborn5@aol.com (Sanborn5) writes...

> 1.) I used to have an old Apple II, 5 meg external hard drive attached to 
>the IIGS. With that hard drive came an interface card that is still installed
>in the machine (though the hard drive died on me long ago). Even with my vague
>description, does anybody know whether or not that card is proprietary? Is it
>an actual SCSI interface card, and can I use it with any standard SCSI hard
>drive?

    It sounds like a ProFile hardrive (Apple sold a 5 MB and 10 MB model).
The controller card is indeed proprietary, it is a bidirectional parallel
interface that is really only useful for operating a ProFile. I would not
even recommend tracking down a replacement ProFile, they are terribly slow
and noisy, not too mention the original card's firmware does not support
GS/OS. The card is rather rare, so you may be able to sell or trade it
towards a SCSI controller by posting to comp.sys.apple2.marketplace.

>If not, does anyone have suggestions for a SCSI card and hard drive
>that will work with a IIGS?

    The RamFAST SCSI (http://www.sequential.com) is still sold today
through Sequential Systems, and by far the best SCSI controller made.
An alternative is the Apple High-Speed SCSI or the original Apple
Rev C SCSI board (non-DMA, hence the slowest of all) but you'll have
to search for the latter two on the used market. Most any SCSI drive
will work, though I would stick between a 120 to 240 MB sized drive.

    If you want an all-in-one solution, Alltech (http://www.allec.com)
sells the Focus HardCard which consists of an 2.5" IDE drive mounted
to a small slot card. It is not as fast or robust as the SCSI solution,
but another option nonetheless.

>2.) I'm looking for a 4 meg (at least) memory expansion card for the GS. Any
>suggestions on mail-order companies that would have them, or would I be better
>off posting my request on comp.sys.apple2.marketplace?

    The Sequential RAM GS or Alltech Sirius RAM IIGS are both available
(with 4 MB installed) for US$89. That is a tad expensive these days
(relative to the value of a GS today and modern SIMM prices) so you
may want to search for the same or similar cards on csa2.marketplace.
You can expand up to 8 MB, but that is overkill for the types of
applications available (and most likely will remain that way since
software development has virtually halted except for a few projects
scattered here and there).

>3.) Can anyone suggest a program that will allow me to format/write/read
>Prodos disks on my Wintel machine? It would make downloading and transferring
>files to the GS much easier.

    ProCOPY for DOS will handle reading of ProDOS diskettes, however the
catch is they must be 3.5" diskettes formatted to 1.44 MB (MFM encoded).
Those only exist from people who have SuperDrives on their machines,
SCSI Floptical drives or a BlueDisk setup (none of which are common).
Also a PC-Transporter card, but that isn't that common either.

    To make a long story short, the Apple II uses GCR encoding for its
5.25 and 3.5 disks, the PC uses MFM encoding. This makes them totally
incompatible. Unless you have one of the above options your forced to
transfer either by modem, null-modem cable link or a Macintosh (with
the latter you can insert 800K ProDOS disks and it can move the data
to MFM formatted MS-DOS media, with the proper software installed).

>4.) Finally, I could use a suite of internet utilities (especially a 
>graphical web browser) for the GS. I've seen two that looked promising 
>(the Spectrum Internet Suite/Web Browser... though I don't believe it 
>was a GRAPHICAL web browser, and the web browser that worked with GS/TCP).

    Internet access on an Apple IIgs is limited. Your best bet at present
is to connect with a text-based shell account, using software that does a
VT-100 dumb terminal connection.

    Spectrum Internet Suite works _only_ with a shell account and isn't
much more than a fancy version of Lynx. It runs ontop of a Unix shell
and lets you point and click at *text* links (there are some nice things
like different fonts, colored links and a toolbar with icon commands,
but it is still not a web-browser in the sense that most people think
of). There are no graphics, no way to download files, no plug-ins, no
sound; nothing really more that you wouldn't already get with Lynx.
Think of it as an enhancement for Lynx.

>Any reccomendations on one over the other?

    That is it as far as "browsers" are concerned. The other software
application is Marinetti, which is a freeware program you can download.
Marinetti lets the GS communicate using the TCP/IP protocol, so you
can connect _directly_ to the Internet (rather than using a shell
based account). Unfortunately at the moment it only supports a SLIP
connections and most ISP's offer only PPP. The other catch is there
is only a single application that has been written for it, and that
is a very simple 'telnet' program. There is great potential here,
but for the moment it is of limited use for anyone wanting complete
Internet access on an Apple IIgs.

>What actually happened with GS/TCP (the last update to the web page
>was a year ago, and it mentioned that the suite of internet programs
>would be released VERY SOON)?

    That seems to have been put off indefinitely. When I spoke to
the author back in the summer he said he hadn't given up on it,
with a comment along the lines he'd complete it "one of these days".
It's been several years we've been waiting for it, though there is
still no clear date when it will be completed and released. It could
be next month or it could be two years from now, who knows...

    In the best possible outcome (being optimistic here) we would
see Marinetti support PPP and several Internet applications, such
as a web-browser, e-mail program, FTP, IRC, etc. Then finally with
support for the Second Sight video card for the web-browser, in
which case you could have a 640x480 display with 16-bit color (of
course the GS would still be decompressing images, so you'd have
to view a page offline since it would take HOURS to display all
the JPEG images on most pages. Even at 15 MHz my IIgs is rather
sluggish decompressing JPEGs). None of this exists, so again your
best and only feasible solution is getting a shell account. I hate
to say it, but a PC or Macintosh are much better equipped for 
Internet access (both software and hardware).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca