This might be a dumb question. I bought some new in box 5.25" Verbatim DS/DD disks for my Apple IIe, and they work great, but I am trying to figure out how to utilize the back side of the disk. Someone at my work told me that I had to notch out a hole like the small square hole on the side on the opposite side, so I have tried that out and it doesn't seem to change it.
If it makes a difference, I took both of the drives apart and cleaned them up on the inside and the heads and stuff, and they both work great. They are both the "Unidisk" variety.
Also, is there a particular way to make the ADTPro disk bootable? Is there a particular way to get ProDOS or whatever it needs on it? I am very familiar with MS-DOS, but the apple 8 bit stuff is kind of new to me.
Thanks for the help.
The error message is "Check disk or drive door"
That really is all there is to it...I normally flip another disk over and use a sharpie to color in the notch using the flipped over disk as a template, then use an exacto knife to notch out the plastic slug. Some people use half of a hole-punch to nibble it out. Back in the day there were actual disk-notchers made for this puspose but they are hard to come by now for a cheap price anyway. Apples only have one head which is on the bottom side, so when the disk is in normally the writing and reading occurs on the bottom or opposite side from the label. But putting another notch on the other side lets you flip the disk over and use the back side.
For PRODOS based disks, you need only to initialize them and then copy over the PRODOS.SYSTEM file to the newly formatted disk. However they are subject to loading programs in the directory sort order, so once prodos.system loads (it can be anywhere) it will look for and then execute the first .SYS/.SYSTEM file it finds. if you want to use an iphone and a 3.5 mm double ended "patch" cable like the ones you used to use to play your iphone in your car's input jack, you can connect one end to the input on your IIe, the other to an iPhone or any web capable phone/ipad and go to http://asciiexpress.net and in the Disks section you will find among hundreds of things, an ADT Pro disk there which will let you download via your phone and then write out to a blank disk automatically and make yourself a bootable disk with everythign in order. Everything on that site is simple using only a phone and blank disks and the cassette port on your IIe. I recommend using the Low-Fi 8K "Format" version as that option will format the disk in whatever format is needed and then load the software on it for you and voila, a bootable disk of whatever you want from the site. The "Games" section will let you use the same phone/cable to directly load a game from the list into memory and run it for you so you don't even have to make a disk if you just want to play a game to try it out or load on demand any time you want to play one.
The ADTPro Disk is bootable, but if you haven't got an ADTPro disk you'll have to make one yourself.
Included in ADTPro's host computer app (te one you run on your PC or Mac) is a subfolder called "disks" and inside it is a disk image of ADTPro that you can copy over to a physical diskette.
Again, if you don't have a botable diskette, follow these steps (I'm going off the top of my head so bear with me...)
Connect your two computers together as per the instructions on the ADTPro website with a USB-Serial adapter (use an FTDI type only) and the serial cable.
Set the dip switches according to the instructions in the ADTPro website and turn the jumper block on the super serial card to "terminal"
Run ADTPro on the host computer.
Turn on you Apple, press ctrl-reset and type in the following commands at the Applesoft "]" prompt:
IN#2 <RETURN>
press ctrl-A ... Apple responds with "Apple SSC"
type 14B <RETURN>
At this point select "serial" on the host computer and use the "speediboot" option
The two machines will communicate. First a small bootloader will be loaded into the Apple II, then ProDOS, then ADTPro itself.
Once ADTPro is running on the Apple II, insert a blank diskette in the drive and use the [F]ormat option to format the disk.
Then [R]eceive an image from the host computer. If you don't know the name, just press RETURN and the Apple will query a list.
Find the ADTPro disk image and select it.
ADTPro will write that image to a physical floppy. That floppy will be bootable and will automatically run ADTPro on your Apple when you turn it on.
That's it.
Oh,and the error "Check disk or drive door" is an ADTPro error where it could not read or detect a disk in the drive. It might not be able to read it if it wasn't formatted first.
Of course if it shows that error when you try to actually format a blank disk then that could mean that (a) the disk is write protected, or (b) the diskette is damaged or defective, or (c) the drive head is dirty or (d) the drive is defective.
So I have tried punching a hole in the same place on the other side of the disk, still no love on the other side.
When I create the ADTpro2.1.0 disk and try to boot the apple iie up with it in, I get the "UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS" error and thats all that happens.
Am I creating the disk wrong? I am going to try another disk with the first disk as a template for the right size hole, and then cut one out with a scalpel to see if I just butchered the disk up too much. I'll report back on the double sided fun.
The disk image of ADTPro included in version 2.1.0 offered here: https://github.com/ADTPro/adtpro/releases/tag/v_2_1_0 includes ProDOS on it.
In fact there are two images: ADTPRO-2.1.0.DSK and ADTPRO-2.1.0.PO. Both include ProDOS.
So if you're transferring either of those two images onto a physical floppy (and getting successful, error-free writes) using ADTPro then you SHOULD be able to boot those resulting floppies successfully. If you're sticking a disk into your drive and are getting the error "UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS" then ProDOS doesn't exist on that particular floppy. This would be the case if you attempted to boot a floppy that you just formatted (and didn't put anything onto it afterwards).
Prodos should run on any IIe with 64K ram or more...have you tried running the self-test to let the system do the ram and system test just to rule that out? Remove any disk, then hold down both the Open-Apple and Solid-Apple keys as you boot, or if the machine is already on hold down both apple keys and hit the reset key while holding them down for a second or two. You will see a bunch of colored squares (on a color monitor) or random looking squares on a monochrome monitor and after about a minute or so you will either see an error message or "Kernel OK" for an unenhanced IIe or "System OK" on an enhanced.
Did you manage to figure out the "backside of the disk" problem? I am running into the same issue with some new Kodak "MD2-D" diskettes. Since the notch changes sides when you flip it over, it makes sense that that's the problem...
I had no problem writing ADTPro's serial client disk image to the topside of the disk and booting off it, however.
To use the "back" side of a diskette, you need to duplicate the notch on the opposite side of the disk.
I used to use a one-hole paper punch to do that - it will create a crescent shaped notch but so long as it is in the same spot and is of the same depth it will work.
Otherwise the disk drive will not write to the "back" side of the diskette as it will think that it is write-protected.
To add to what baldrick wrote.
If you had written something on the disk which you did not want to be deleted by accident, you put a little sticker over the notch.
When the notch is covered with a sticker the drive would see the disk as write-protected again.
Last time I went to doubleside a disk, the plastic was so old and brittle, it shattered where I punched it. What a mess!
Chesh
Thanks for the help!
I cut a notch with a craft knife using another disk as a template, but the format utility in the ADTPro boot disk can't seem to format it still. The drive runs for a bit and then makes an ugly noise and gives the "check disk or drive door" error. Perhaps the notch just isn't deep enough, but I've got a Unidisk 5.25" with an optical sensor, so you'd think some of the light would be getting through... will experiment more later.
It does seem to work fine to format and write the topside, so I'm guessing it's just a bad cut.