Hi All,
Was wondering about how the //e handles booting. I currently have two controller cards, a 19-pin that I use with either my DuoDisk or Floppy Emu, and I just picked up an older Disk ][ controller card, the one with the 20-pin connectors. If I keep the 19-pin controller in slot 6, and put the 20-pin on in slot 5, will the //e ever boot from the slot 5 disks if there's nothing in the slot 6 drives? I know I can probably do a PR#5 command to get it to boot from slot 5, but was curious if the system will look beyond whatever is in slot 6 if both drives are empty.
Thanks for any help.
It won't look beyond slot 6. If you have the 19-pin controller in slot 6 then if there’s no disk in that floppy drive, it’ll just run forever.
At one time I had a 5.25” controller in slot 6 but mostly wanted to boot off a card in slot 5. So I wrote a little program that would boot slot 5 and kept that disk in the drive in slot 6
Wayne is right, if it just sits there waiting to boot from slot 6 you will have to hit reset to get a BASIC prompt and then type PR#5. Wayne's suggestion is a good workaround. Or just put bootable floppy like a DOS 3.3 master in there and then when you get the BASIC prompt type PR# whatever you want.
If you're willing to modify the IIe's ROM, there are ways to change the boot order or even automatically try a different slot if no disk is present.
ROMXe might be a great way to experiment with these ROM modifications. If you just want a turnkey solution, there's also Michael Guidero's ROMeX (also included in ROMXe). Yes, the names are confusing!