Re: Apple //e will not boot--Help

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Barry Davis wrote:

>I recently purchased an Apple //e (A2S2064 with an extended 80-column card) 
>and I am not able to boot the machine.  I have tried two different 
>controller cards (655-0101-B) with two 5.25 apple drives (A9M0107) and a 
>duodisk drive (A9M0108) in all different combinations.  I have tried Apple 
>Presents, DOS 3.3 System Master, and the ProDOS User's Disk.  Several times 
>in booting the DOS 3.3 disk, it partially loaded and then stopped when 
>trying to bload "loader.obj0" followed with a I/O Error.  But for the most 
>part the drives just spin away with only the Apple //e on the screen.  I 
>have cleaned the cards' contacts and tried slot 5 and 7, but to no avail.

Although it may seem unlikely, you have a small enough sample
of disks and drives that it may simply be that none of one or the
other is working properly.  If all the disks have been stored together,
they may all be suffering from similar degradation.

The good news is that if it _is_ the disk(s), the fact that your
DOS 3.3 disk is at least booting DOS--though unable to reliably
load part of the startup application--you can use it to initialize
new disks, and to copy whatever is readable on DOS disks to them.

Simply press ctrl-C during the boot, and DOS will stop after loading
at the Applesoft prompt "]".  Then remove the boot disk and insert
a blank (or disposable) disk and type "INIT HELLO".  This will
create a newly-formatted DOS 3.3 disk which should now boot,
read, and write reliably.  (If it does not, then the drive you used
is suspect.)

While you are at the Applesoft prompt, you may be able to run
COPYA from the DOS 3.3 Master and format and/or copy disks
(of any operating system) to new disks for use, if they can be
read.

-michael

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