I just decided to dig out a apple2 GS that a got a while back. I'm having some problems getting a OS, or even anything to boot. I have a feeling either the programs i'm writeing to 3.5'' floppies useing rarwrite(for windows), are suppost to run on the 5.2'' drives. I own the GS box, a 3.5'' drive, and a 5.25'' drive, and the GS monitor (though I have it pluged into my TV) So i'm unsure if maybe I need a harddrive or something? I really just want to get a few clasics running, and maybe some way of writeing some programs. The only thing I can manage to do with my GS so far is run BASIC, which i'm guessing is built into the rom because I simply use control-power to get there. Any help would be appreciated.
Anonymous
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The GS can't read anything you write with your Windows computer's floppy drives, so that isn't an avenue open to you. Well, that's not 100% accurate, but it's a close approximation for our purposes here.
Are you saying you have NO software on disk now (zero, nada, zilch)? If so, you have some work ahead of you. See:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html
I thought you could write mac bootable floppies with a PC.
If they're of the 1.44M variety, that's true. But it's much more likely that the floppy drive is 800k on a GS, which you cannot write with a PC.
So the mac's 3.5" floppy is only 800k?
The Macs floppy drive came in 400K 800K and 1.44MB versions. The 1.44MB is the only one that can be reliably written from a PC without special hardware such as a Catweasel card.
Yeah my drive is 800k. So I take it the bootstrap is my only method of getting anything to run? I'll have to keep a eye out for the 8-pin mini-din connector.
Either that or get an older mac with a superdive in it that can write 800k prodos disks.
Chris
Well, yes, if you want to do it yourself. You can buy OS disks from Syndicomm:
http://store.syndicomm.com/index.php?cPath=2_31&osCsid=e90924ebc947314e7df7e4bf5c3fb796
But you still have the chicken/egg situation if you want to download and reconstitute stuff from the 'net. You can either go the serial cable and transfer route for cheap, or buy a CompactFlash sort of arrangement
(i.e. http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php ) and copy stuff to the CF card for use on the Apple.