I have an Apple IIe, and an Apple IIGS, my questions are for the Apple IIGS I have nailed down everything I needed to know about the IIe.
1. Can I make a boot disk with a 3.5" floppy and an emulator on my PC or MacPro (don't know if the USB floppy drive will work on the MacPro, but I have several PCs that have or can have a 3.5" floppy drive on board, or via USB)
2. I have an adapter that I bought for one of the colored CRT iMac, CRT blew, and I was able to hook the old style Apple 15 pin port to a VGA monitor, does the IIGS have a different set up or is it the same as the earlier CRT iMacs?
3. There is an 8-pin socket on the logic board (I think it was 8-pin) it had "Game" silk screened below it; what goes in that socket?
4. Will any of my IIe stuff work with the IIGS (ram card, etc.)
I apologize in advance, but I'm a CoCo, Commodore, PC guy since the 80's and don't work with a lot of Apple. I'm trying to set this IIGS up with a serial null modem to a PC to recover some files for a friend that both parents are since passed, and the stuff was written in what I'm assuming was an Apple word processor on either a IIGS or IIC (mentioned something about a clone Apple system). I tried reading them with my ZoomFloppy and a Commodore floppy drive with no success.
Hello cfaust,
welcome to the board....
I´ll leave the question no.1to other members at the moment....
no.2:
as far as i know the plug is not the same !
at least i can spot you to a opage that displays pinout of the monitor plug at the IIGS:
http://www.appleii-box.de/H071_applephiliipsRGBconnections.htm
No.3:
That plug is the so called "gameport"
and is samelike in old II,II+ and IIe models.
Specific details can be viewed at:
http://www.appleii-box.de/H043_AppleIIGamePortPages.htm
No.4:
Most of the "stuff" assuming that you talk about interfacecards - will work at the IIGS
EXCEPT those cards designed to be used at the "auxiliary memory slot"
which is at US IIe models close to the powersupply unit frontwards towards the keyboardside
and at the european models tha slot is between slot 3 and the keyboardside frontwards towards the keyboard.
MARK UP:
The "auxiliary Memory slot" at the IIe is NOT IDENTICAL with the "Auxiliary memory slot" of the IIGS
at the front right side in the IIGS !
Recovering the text from the parents:
that stuff might have been written within either
"Appleworks"
or with
"Apple Writer II"
both availiable at asimov as disk images for download.
Beware that the text then is not completly plain ASCII text but instead
contains "Control Characters" either for driving a printer or driving display at the Monitor....
i´d recommend to download from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Books/
or from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Computers/Apple%20II/Apple%20IIGS/Manuals/
some manual stuff for the IIGS to get familiar with the system and have a
reference local online at your PC.
sincerely speedyG
It looks like I'll have an easier time with this than building a converter to use VGA on a Commodore 128, that was a headache, required diodes, resistors and pots, hooked up to a video game video board to a VGA (or DVI/HDMI) monitor. Looks like it might be closer to CGA than VGA like on the later Power Macs and earlier iMacs.
Thank you for the information, this puts me much closer, I'll have to temporarily use a small composite portable DVD player till I work out using the video board for the IIgs. Working on getting it booted tomorrow.
Thank you again.
Hi cfaust,
Regarding question #1, you can't write an Apple IIGS 3.5 floppy on a PC natively.
Perhaps on a Mac, I'm not familiar with anything beyond the IIgs
Your wise choice may be to use ADT Pro.
So you can transfer software back and forth to the IIgs using a Mac or a PC.
I have a 2012 MacPro dual Intel Xeon machine, if it will recognize my USB 3.5" floppy drive I should be good.
Just in case though, this is a Woz IIgs with 1MB of RAM, if I had to go and purchase the diskettes, which versions should I be hunting?
the IIGS is only able to read DS/DD disks ( i.e. with 800 kb formatted in proDOS )
otherwise you will have to use 5,25 floppydisks with 140 kB SS/DD ....
The best way to get bootable floppy will be to ransfer via ADT the diskimages of the
system 6 to 3,5 diskfloppies ( DS/DD ) if you have native IIGS 3,5 diskdrive:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Software/Operating%20Systems/Apple%20IIGS%20System/Disk%20Images/
speedyG
Wasn't there some kind of card for a PC that worked with Apple II disks? Or, maybe I am thinking of that emulator card that plugs into a PC that emulates a IIe?
I'll probably have to suck it up and buy a set of diskettes, my budget for this data recovery project is getting smaller and smaller, and the diskette set is the least expensive route at this point.
I have a Diskware DOS 3.3 System Master on 5.25" floppy, the Woz boots just fine from it. It has a "Master" program on it, but I for the life of me can not remember, nor can I find what I am looking for, or even know if it is possible to format a 3.5" floppy on slot6, drive2, and make a master in that to boot from?
Hello Charles,
sucking the images from asimov cost nothing....
the set of GSOS 6.0.1 that i spotted in my posting has bootable floppy images for 3,5 disk ( 800kB ).
in general IIGS are often sold with the related 3,5 floppydrive.
That drives are often also offered at ebay by single.
The only problem will be to get 3,5 disks as double sided / double density from ebay..... ( DON´t use HD Disks ! )
but they are also offered for atari or commodore computers....
to enable them to be formatted at IIGS use a big strong magnet for erasing prior to formating...
with ADT bootstrapped you can format that disks....
otherwise you may walk along following path:
suck copy II plus 9.01 disk 1 from assimov and boot that disk from 5,25 diskdrive
and then format 3,5 disks from menu in copy II plus at 3,5 drive allocated to slot 5.
speedyG
I have 49 brand new unused DSDD 3.5" floppies, its the hardware I'm running in to issues with.
I haven't given up though, my Mac Pro with OSX on it won't format the 3.5" to anything else but MS-DOS FAT, so that was a wash, but it is nice to know that at least the USB floppy drive works with it I guess. Sweet16 will also read floppies, but won't write floppies, so I found that out as well.
This weekend I'm going to order a null modem cable, and a PCI serial card and go from there unless a really old Performa lands in my lap that I can hook those drives up to from the IIgs LOL.
I really appreciate the support here, and am thankful for you guys, you know what would really blow my mind though, to find out an iPhone or iPad could do this LOL. Anyway, I'll keep you posted if anything interesting crops up. I downloaded the .po files for 7 disks and here in a week I'll probably get ADT going once I have the hardware in place that I still need.
Ooo, I did have another question though, and I've been having trouble finding the right documentation or it is squirreled away to keep people like me guessing.
I booted the Woz up with a Diskmaster with DOS 3.3 on it, will it access the 3.5" floppy? The 5.25" is on slot 6 as drive 1, is the 3.5" on slot 6 as drive 2, or is it a different slot as drive 1?
I am looking at a Macintosh Performa 6200CD from mid 90's, I can't make out the video port on the back, but shouldn't it be a 15 pin port, same as the IIgs, or PC game port? The picture on Ebay makes it look weird, or is it a weird port? EveryMac states that it is a DB15 (like the PC gameport). The price won't break me if this is the case, I have a Mac DB15 to VGA adapter from the Macinstien I was working on years ago when I joined Apple Fritter.
Hello Charles,
first: USB floppy might read only IIGS disks but not write or format them.
In general USB-Floppies only write at HD disks and at mac that will be hfs system......
second:
At the IIGS drives are allocated in the following order:
5,25 inch at slot 6 either drive 1 or drive 2
3,5 inch at slot 5 either drive 1 or drive 2 !
Up to my knowledge Mac plugs only match with other Mac plugs
but they do NOT match with IIGS plugs !
I don´t want to be unpolite, but i recomended in posting #1 the download link of the IIGS manual
THAT EXPLAINS THE AVAILIABLE PLUGS AT THE IIGS ! rtfm !
speedyG
Right, the 800k on a 720k floppy was obtained by variable speed floppy drive, found that last night.
The 720k can be formatted in MS-DOS format on a Mac with a USB floppy drive, it did it, but I'm going to use a magnet like you said earlier so that the IIGS will format them properly.
The IIGS uses a 15hz refresh, and has pins allocated differently, but it still uses a DB15 female connector on the computer for video, most of the older Performas and some of the earlier iMac (If they had an additional video out) used the same female connector, but the pins were allocated in such a way that you could use a DB15 to D-SUB VGA adapter to hook them up to a VGA monitor. You can't do this directly with the IIgs first of all you have to jump a pin to another, and then you have to have a 15hz to 50/60hz upscale board to connect the IIgs to a VGA monitor. I get all that, but I was looking at a Macintosh Performa 6200CD on ebay last night, and I couldn't tell if the video port on it was DB15 like I remember. I was thinking about getting the Performa to make the disks with, but instead ordered a PCI serial card for a PC, a null modem and downloaded the program that was mentioned earlier in the thread instead. Like I really need another old computer, the wife thinks I'm nuts as it is with the IIe, Power Mac dual G5, Mac Pro dual Xeon, several Commodores, Amigas, Sinclair, and Atari computers AND my PCs.
Maybe I worded my question wrong, that and I've been reading through so much stuff lately to try and get this recovery done, because after this set of 10 floppies with poems and letters, I was told there are at least another 50 or more to do.
In the vast majority of cases, no. The 3.5" disks came after DOS3.3 and were primarily used in ProDOS disk format (which could hold ProDOS 16 or later GS/OS). In most cases, without special utilities, the two operating systems could not handle each other's file system.
I believe it was GS/OS 6.0 that introduced a DOS 3.3 File System Translator (FST) that could read DOS 3.3 disks. But from what I've used of it, this feature doesn't seem to bring a lot to the table.
Mindcraft (Nibble) published UniDOS which allowed for two 400K volumes on a 3.5" disk, in DOS 3.3 format. According to UniDOS's advertisements it can read DOS 3.3 disks if you boot from UniDOS.
welcome sonnik,
but that won´t solve the given problem to generate bootable IIGS 3,5 disks like demanded in the postings above....
it´s usefull to also read the previous postings to give correct answers...
speedyG
Well, speedyG...
You may want to save your advice on what is useful for yourself. If you had noticed in my post I was quoting a secondary question cfaust had asked. This can be observed with essential keywords cfaust used like "I did have another question".
I've got a serial card, null modem, and a newer 5.25" system floppy coming, I was trying use the system disk from my IIe for the time being without any luck. I should have it all sorted soon with the downloads and hardware.
Figured out my confusion with the video port style on the Performa I was looking at, and good thing I didn't order it, don't need another headache like the Atari 1040. It has an HDI-45 connector on it, I searched for a 6200CD, but the one I was looking at was a 6115CD with a HDI video port.
Correcting an earlier statement: UniDOS and Nibble were from MicroSPARC, not Mindcraft.
Don't you think about the rare Diamond Trackstar ?
Pictures and infos here (in subdirs).
If we (the guy I'm doing the recovery, and myself) get another allotment to the budget, we'll invest in the SDcard board for the IIgs. I got one for the Commodore 64/128 and it works great, can't wait to see if we end up getting one for the IIgs. The most amazing thing I see with the SD addon card for the IIgs is that the operating system is pre-loaded from what I've read. If this works out the way I think it will, he's already given me the IIgs, and anything that goes with it so far that he purchased, in addition to the stuff I purchased for this project, I'll bring the GS home from the shop and set it up next to my Mac Pro, get the USB>Serial adapter and just set the two up together for future disk finds from him. I already know that one of the diskettes (5.25") are no long readable, but that is only one out of twenty so far. I really appreciate the information so far, and I apologize for the odd questions, I don't get a lot of time for research anymore, I repair a lot of laptops and portables (notebooks, laptops) on the PC side, I do this as a sub-business for a small engine repair shop that I also do the IT work for, and a couple of local small businesses. In addition to that I research parts, find parts, and scour inventory for an upcoming software system change for the mower side of the business. I help a lot of not-so-rich people with information on obtaining parts that I can not get for them without charging a mark up, and I do a lot of free and low cost computer repairs on the side for people who can't afford the time or the money for a big name shop. I refurbish donation computers, ensuring data from the previous owner can't be retrieved. In a nut shell, I haven't had the time to update my mini-computer museum, research my computer fetish with older systems, etc. I really do appreciate all the information, the serial method should be pretty easy, we used to do this regularly between my Color Computer 3 and my first PC and old IBM clone XT machine. The software download suggested early on in this post will make it much more simple to do what I need to do than the CoCo/Atari to XT was though, we couldn't actually boot either from the serial to XT.
Hello Charles,
just a reminder:
don´t forget that in the meantime while waiting for the hardware at the
"non IIGS"-side there is Java demanded to be installed to ensure that
ADT will operate correct. This can be handled in the meantime while
waiting for the hardware to arrive.
speedyG
Java is done already