Re: Programming the Apple IIe via the cassette in

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

John Syer wrote:

>Hi all,
>    I have just resurected my Base48 (Apple IIe clone) and found that my
>entire collection of 5.25" floppies have passed on.

Do not conclude this too hastily.

Unless they have suffered obvious mechanical damage ("the dog
ate my disks" ;-), they may be OK, but you may have a problem
with your disk drive(s).

I would recommend verifying them on a known working system.

Even in the case of dirt, abrasion, creasing, or fungus, it is often
possible to recover most of a diskette's contents through judicious
sleeve-swapping, cleaning, etc.

Of course, if the are easily replaced, it may not be worth the
trouble--but it is great experience.  ;-)

>  I remember in the past
>one of my apple user friends booted his machine via the cassette in (and a
>tape player).  Has anyone thought of connecting the audio output of a Mac or
>PC to the cassette input of the Apple II and sending instructions that way?

The Apple II does not generally "boot" from cassette, but it has monitor
routines that can be used to read (<start>.<end>R) files into memory.
It is possible to read a DOS image.  Perhaps that is what your friend did.

>    I do not have a serial card for the Apple so I cannot get an operating
>system to the machine using ADT.

Super Serial cards are quite common and inexpensive.  Since the
average speed of cassette data transfer is 1500 bps, and a serial
link can easily achieve ten times this. and since utilities for serial
transfer are readily available, an SSC might be a good investment.

Check the csa2 FAQ.

>    If this has not been done, I would be interested in exploring the
>possibilities although I would need an image of dos3.3 or prodos, and
>information about the cassette interface.

Good luck.

-michael

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