Is it possible to run gs os on an original II or II plus

it's about as likely as running Windows 8 on Apple II.
the IIe thing was a motherboard swap. no such thing exists for the II.

another bottlenech would be the required RAM.... it´s beyond the ability of the Apple II....
although there are some RAMcards with better RAMhandling it won´t work with normal cards....
maybe if a slinky card is availiable - it might be worth a try.... but in case it would work -
it would be awfully slow....
speedyG

Well I would think you'd need to change the 6502 to a 65c02, then worry about RAM and 80 columns and stuff like that. Easier to buy a GS while they are cheap. This would also only bring you to an enhanced IIe level. The GS has a whole lot more.

Hello Corey,
i just do get amazed about the repeating of that similar kinds of questions....
it´s like the question:
"Can an old disabled man carry a donkey ?
yes - if he is that stupid - not to ride the donkey!"

or in comparision:
"Can i calculate on an Apple II all flightdata for the mission to Mars ?
answer: yes - if you have time enough to wait several years for the results !"

some people seem to have close affinity to the story about "the Count of Monte Christo"
calculating the time required to dig themselves with a spoon out of their prisoned brain....
probably forgetting that the priest died during that task and even the count didn´t make the escape through the wall....

maybe you remember your son asking something like:
can i build something like Empire State Building or a Castle ?
In such cases parents shall not disencourage their kids but try to keep them inspired...

just my 5 cents
speedyG

Well I would think you'd need to change the 6502 to a 65c02, then worry about RAM and 80 columns and stuff like that. Easier to buy a GS while they are cheap. This would also only bring you to an enhanced IIe level. The GS has a whole lot more.

Actually it's much worse than that. GSOS runs on 65C816, not a 65C02. GS has a slew of hardware difference (much of the II functionality are handle by MEGA II ASIC; the same ASIC used on the IIe PDS card for Mac LC/Colour Classic line) Architecturally it is a very different beast.

So yeah, one would have as much luck getting Windows 8 to run on a 16k Apple II.

Hello dorkbert,
i don´t believe that user is hunting for a solution that far to run with NDA´s and drivers....
i´d rather more guess him to target for something "look alike" GSOS....

in that case the first condition would be using one of the equal or later ProDOS versions after 2.01.....
and of course having a desktop with the "feel alike" but without having a real finder...
just having some windows to play with the mouse....

so to get that "feel alike" he´d need quite a lot of memory ( at least some 256 kB ) ....

but he can´t use a simple card like Saturn - because it would not be able to be supported
by ProDOS in correct way ....
it must be a card that can be recognized by programs like Appleworks, pinpoint or
KIX....
then there is a good chance that - if he loads "MOUSE DESK" and
if he has a mousecard in slot 4
the RAMcard in slot 5
and a harddiskcontroller like CFFA or SCSI card in slot 7
and Disks attached to controller in slot 6

- he might be able to start playing with a mouse on the desktop of Mousedesk
and ProDOS below permitting him to use a program like Pinpoint or proSelect or copyIIplus.....

- that would get quite close to the "feel alike" of a GSOS
and it could probably(* with correct patched RAMcard ) be used with an Apple II configuration....
but there would still be a lot of tweaking requested ...
it could be got running on 65C02

( i had something like such a solution allready running on the IIe
and some patched RAMcard would do similar in Apple II )
.... but there is still the problem of the difference in RAMhandling
between rhe Apple II with RAM card
and Apple IIe with MMU chip and RAM allocated in the AUX slot.
( and another kickass: some patches only work with ProDOS 1.1.1 and
have never been tested with later ProDOS versions )

Allthough for some cards ( like the RAMplus from Cirtech,
or some other cards like the RAMFACTOR from AE for the Apple II
and the slinky card there have been patches availiable
to get something like a larger desktop running at top of ProDOS
and availiable with additional RAM to Appleworks, PinPoint and several other programs....)

but it remains still like making "disabled old man carry a donkey".....

it would cause system to slow down dramatically because it would force system to be using most time for
switching small RAMblocks around and pushing one content of one block of RAM to another block visible RAM within the 48 kB area.... ( and you could start cooking water for the coffeecup while windows apear at the Apple II while starting up and loading )

speedyG

so to get that "feel alike" he´d need quite a lot of memory ( at least some 256 kB ) ....

then there is a good chance that - if he loads "MOUSE DESK" and
if he has a mousecard in slot 4
the RAMcard in slot 5
and a harddiskcontroller like CFFA or SCSI card in slot 7
and Disks attached to controller in slot 6
speedyG

Hello, none of those cards are too rare. If I had all of them here at my house I would be willing to try it out. Honestly, I don't care if it's not as good as a regular IIgs, that's not the point to me. I think it would be pretty cool to see an early apple running fairly advanced (for that time) software. Kinda like the classic car reference we always see on this board; sure you can buy a new sports car. but it's cool to retro fit an older car even if it doesn't perform as good as a newer one.

So how about it? Does anyone have a slinky/mouse card/etc. to run this? It would be pretty cool just to take some pics and say "hey, I did it, and yea it is useless lol".

I think both GEOS and Mouse Desk runs on DHR, so II+ is a bit of a stretch.

O.K. so here is the listing of the configuration of which i know it works,
because i have had it tested on a Apple II+:
slot 1 - APL printer interface
slot 2 - super serial card
slot 3 - videx ultra term
slot 4 - mouse interface card
slot 5 - Cirtech RAMplus 1 MB RAM card with 1 MB RAM and patchdisks for Apple 1.3 and PproDOS 1.1.1
( this patch also worked with PinPoint gicing in both application a desktop with 862 kB availiable )
slot 6 - Disk II interface with 2 Disk II drives attached
slot 7 - Apple SCSI card with 150 MB Harddisk ( ID= 1 ) and CD ROM Drive ( ID = 2 ) and ZIP JAZZdrive ( ID = 3 )
attached

load first ProDOS 1.1.1
load Appleworks 1.3 with Cirtech patch ( gets RAMcard organized to cooperate as desktop )
quit Appleworks 1.3 and start Pinpoint or KIX
to reopen desktop
start mouse desk from pinpoint or KIX using the reopened desktop and getting the graphical interface for
use with the mouse.... a little work had to be done to get an icon for harddisk and associating it with volume- folders that represent the hard disk.

enjoy new feel of display and slowness....

remark: if you don´t have the Cirtech RAMplus card it should be able to be done with AE RAMfactor with Appleworks patch and AE desktop loaded ( that should be comparable to the cirtech desktop )
if using the slinky card you must assure that it displays full RAMspace within Appleworks as availiable desktop...
it´s more than 25 years ago ant i believe to remember there was also a patch used.... i may probably have it somewher printed in one of the old Gernman user magazins in the shelf ( date something about end of 1985 or 86 ot beginning of 87 )....

- if i have a evening with realy nothing usefull to do - i could spend such an evening to make that configuration again and take some pictures... i still have the entire equipment ...

my actual configurations are pretty more cool...:
http://www.harrowalsh.de/Elektronik/APPLEBOX/AppolecornerPage01.htm
and
http://www.harrowalsh.de/Elektronik/APPLEBOX/AppolecornerPage02.htm

in the moment i don´t have enough SCSI cards - so i have to move the existing cards from system to system...
i´m at the moment still hunting for SCSI cards that enable me to leave the cards in the system without relocations...

and at the moment my days are not filled with useless sparetime... today for example i have scanned another 15 magazins of WINDFALL ( later APPLE USER ) from 84 and 85 and preparing them for upload at asimov..... hoping to complete the scans of the rest of magazines from 1985 and loading them to asimov tommorow.... it´s worth reading the related thread...

speedyG

"Can an old disabled man carry a donkey ?

Yes, I see disabled old men carrying donkeys all the time in my neighborhood. Until they both arrive to the mothership. Those almond eyed fellas like to perform experimentation you know.

or in comparision:
"Can i calculate on an Apple II all flightdata for the mission to Mars ?
answer: yes - if you have time enough to wait several years for the results !"

I'm sure an Apple II would be fine for calculating a course to Mars. The II is about as fast as a mid-1950's IBM 704 scientific mainframe and machines of that caliber were still in use throughout the early years of the space program. (Notably, still around and still useful when the Mariner 5 mission successfully flew past Mars.) Or to put it another way, the Apple II compares on pretty even terms with the Apollo Guidance Computer, and that machine was capable of making the decisions necessary to get a manned capsule from lunar orbit to the surface in real time.

(Heck, a good mathematician could probably give you some pretty good figures for rocket burns and trajectories to get to Mars in a day or two using pencil and paper. Not really a good example.)

well restrictingit to the pure flight data only - i´d agree....

i was thinking in that moment more about the complex simulations calculated along with the
curiosity project and the entire data related to realtime calculation in the landing eagle
before dropping the rover..... the famous "15 minutes of terror" ( as it was called by the
staff-members by themself ) while the project had to depend on itself...
till to the moment the rover had its touchdown.....that stuff had to be in limits fault tolerant and
selfadjusting..... all that stuff together entirely recalculating on an Apple II...
- how much time would you guess for that ?

sincerely speedyG

i was thinking in that moment more about the complex simulations calculated along with the curiosity project

Well, running a simulation is a different kettle of fish than running the spacecraft. The computational requirements are of course going to depend on how accurate your simulation is trying to be and how many variables you're taking into account. Early IBM Mainframe/Calculators in the 600 and 700 series did "simulation work" for the early Redstone/Jupiter missile programs so it's certainly possible to do that kind of work on an Apple II (or less) caliber machine.

realtime calculation in the landing eagle
before dropping the rover..... the famous "15 minutes of terror" ( as it was called by the
staff-members by themself ) while the project had to depend on itself...
till to the moment the rover had its touchdown.....that stuff had to be in limits fault tolerant and
selfadjusting..... all that stuff together entirely recalculating on an Apple II...
- how much time would you guess for that ?

The Honeywell computers in the Viking landers from 1976 are a little difficult to compare to an Apple II due to architectural differences; apparently they were 24 bit machines with "an 4.34-microsecond instruction cycle time". That's about the same a 1mhz 6502, but it is a longer word length so the machines were probably substantially faster. But not outrageously so. (We're probably looking at the difference between an Apple II and, I dunno, an 8Mhz XT clone, not something ridiculous like an Apple II vs. a Pentium II. The computers in the *orbiters*, on the other hand, were probably somewhat slower than an Apple II.) That's close enough I'd say that with some good engineering you could build a probe able to ride out those 15 minutes of terror using 1Mhz 6502s.

(Or, for an even more direct comparison, the Sojourner Mars rover from 1996 had a 2mhz Intel 80C85, the same CPU used in the Tandy Model 100 portable computer from 1983. The 8085 isn't as cycle-efficient as the 6502, so an Apple II is indisputably faster than the unit used in that probe. Which, of course, had its own 15 minutes of terror during landing.)

The power of desktop PCs has far, far outstripped the computational requirements of the space program. Undoubtedly NASA would probably be thrilled if they could put more powerful computers in their hardware but for reasons of power consumption and radiation resistance most space probes are fitted with digital pipsqueaks. Curiosity's brain, perhaps the most powerful launched into deep space to date, is a 200mhz PowerPC 750 variant, thus making it about as powerful as a 1998 iMac. That's certainly faster than an Apple II but that much CPU power will get you laughed right off the Internet today.

Anyway, the point is that embedded systems (including those used in spacecraft) is usually a poor category to pick from if you want an example of an application where powerful computers are necessary.