Brendan Miller wrote:
I'm trying to get ahold of an apple ii gs, and I'm trying to figure out what sort of periferals I need. If I recall correctly (I was a little kid when I last used one of these) I need a disk to boot up "pro dos". Can I create a properly formatted 3.5 disk with prodos on it with a modern computer? Is that all I need to get a prompt and be able to input BASIC commands?
There's no simple way of writing 800K Apple disks (the only ones the iigs will "eat" without special hardware) on modern computers, be they Windows, Linux, or Mac. So do get a boot disk along with the computer, or arrange for somebody around here to make a disk for you.
You want a GS/OS boot disk at the least. GS/OS is the graphical operating system. It includes ProDOS.
Also, the GS has an ADB port. Can I just get any old macintosh ADB keyboard and mouse and plug them into the IIgs?
Should work. No idea whether additional keys on a keyboard will work though.
How useful are the 5 1/4 disk drives if I have a 3.5 drive?
They're useful for running floppy-based 8-bit software that can't be easily installed onto another medium. For example, the vast majority of those Apple II games that aren't IIgs specific.
-- Linards Ticmanis