Focus drive in IIe (long)

[casa@unm.edu (Jim Pittman)]

Here's a question for you net gurus. A friend has an Apple IIe and
wants to have a hard drive. I have praised the Focus drive to every-
one I know who has an Apple IIgs as being the most cost-effective
and simple hard drive solution available (with some limits, granted).

So I recommended that my friend get a Focus drive for the IIe.

We planned ahead. We phoned Alltech and asked _SPECIFICALLY_ if it
would run on a NON-enhanced Apple IIe.

Sure it will, they said.

We planned ahead some more. Despite what Alltech said, we expected
the Focus drive to arrive with a copy of ProDOS 2.0.3 - that won't
run on a non-enhanced IIe. No problem; we'd install a copy of ProDOS
1.9 that will run on any 64-K Apple II, II Plus or IIe.

The drive arrived. We popped it into slot 1 of a IIgs, copied the
files on the disk to the IIgs hard drive just to save them (yes, the
ProDOS was 2.0.3 as we expected), then copied to the now empty drive,
in this order:

PRODOS        version 1.9
BASIC.SYSTEM  because we wanted to use a simple BASIC startup
STARTUP       the simple Applesoft BASIC program selector
FOLDERS       various folders to hold applications

Then we installed a few applications such as AppleWorks, Sneeze, etc.

I went to the control panel and told the IIgs to boot from slot 1,
restarted and it booted just fine. (Very fast going from the BASIC
program selector into AppleWorks 3.0, too.)

We turned off the IIgs, pulled the Focus drive and put it into Slot
7 of an un-enhanced Apple IIe. Turn on -- the Disk ][ in slot 6
started up. No Focus. The light on the Focus drive did NOT come on.

We turned off the IIe, pulled the disk controller out of slot 6,
turned on the IIe - nothing.

(We even temporarily put the Focus drive in slot 6 - still nothing.)

After CONTROL-RESET to get to the BASIC prompt, a "PR#7" started up
the Focus drive (with its red indicator light) just fine.

Okay, maybe the non-enhanced IIe can't start looking for a bootable
device in slot 7 then look in slot 6 then look in slot 5 etc. So we
tried the Focus drive in slot 7 of an ENHANCED Apple IIe. The exact
same sequence occurred with that machine.

We gave up. My friend borrowed an unused IIgs and installed the Focus
drive in slot 7 and is now (temporarily) using the IIgs as a fast IIe.

But WHY WHY WHY does Alltech say in their documentation that the Focus
drive can be installed in slot 7 of a IIe and it will boot up? Have I
missed something?

Thanks for your time.

- Jim Pittman - AppleQuerque Computer Club - casa at unm dot edu