Re: Apple IIe boot question

["Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast.net>]

> I can't speak specifically to the issue of whether or not the Apple II can
> boot directly from any specific type of controller/drive combination, but
if
> it is of any use, I can tell you this much.  From the II+ onward, the II
> series machines have had the ability to boot directly thanks to the
> autostart rom.  The rom code looks at the slots one at a time until it
finds
> an expansion card that it recognizes as representing a bootable device,
and
> then it boots from it.  It starts at slot 7 and works its way downward.
In
> my IIe, I have a Sider drive attached to a controller in slot 7, and my
5.25
> floppy drives are attached to a controller in slot 6, so the machine boots
> from the Sider in slot 7.  If I swapped the controller cards then it would
> boot from floppy instead.  Assuming that the controller card for the hard
> drive you want to boot from is one that the autostart rom would recognize
as
> representing a boot device, all you should have to do is to place it into
> the highest numbered slot.  Exactly what the autostart rom looks for to
> recognize the card is something I don't recall though.  Hope this helps.

My IIe (enhanced) will boot from whatever is in the highest slot also,
but, it won't bypass an empty Disk II or Apple 5.25 drive. Also, it won't
recognize all 4 partitions on a CFFA card in any slot but 5. So, I have to
put the 3.5 in 6, the CFFA in 5 and the 5.25 in slot 4. The unenhanced
IIe board I just got purposely to test firmware in an IDE device that
wasn't made for anything but a IIe enhanced or IIgs. It seems to be
working ok, except for not booting and only sees the first 2 of the 4
partitions. I was very excited to discover that the ProDOS Users Disk
has a conversion feature that allows DOS 3.3 programs to be made to
run on ProDOS disks. Now I can run MS.PAC-MAN from my IIgs
with ProDOS 2.0.3. YEAH!!!!!!!!! Of course, I have to set the speed to
NORMAL, which takes all of 5 seconds. ;-) Anyway, I have a II+ MB,
and as soon as my keyboard arrives I'll see if I can get that to boot this
new thing. Even if you have to boot to floppy first and type IN#x, it'll
still be great to have a hard drive other than SCSI to choose from. ;-)

Thanks for the replies everyone, hope someone can tell me I can put an
AutoStartRom in a II+. ;-) Doubt it but hope so.

Bill @ GarberStreet Enterprises };-)
Web Site - http://garberstreet.netfirms.com
Email - willy46pa@comcast.net



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