On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Lawrence Walker wrote:
> > > I just picked up an AppleII and 2 FDDs with a bunch of add-ons
> > > at a local thrift store. The only Apple I have explored is my Mac+.
> > > Anyone able to identify the cards ?
>
> Thanks, Sam. I , hooked it up to my multi-purpose Commodore 1702,
> dug thru some extraneous disks I had accumulated, put a program
> called "Homeword" in the drive, and was pleased to see it works fine.
> I had expected it to not work without an Apple-dos boot disk.
> So far my problem has been sifting thru the wealth of material
> available on the I-net re the Apple II. The csa2 faq seems to be
> mainly about the GS.
The Apple ][, unlike some other computer systems, doesn't really need a
boot disk. All software that I ever had for the Apple had the disk
operating system included on the disk. You just stick it in the drive and
it boots. Apple DOS 3.3 took only 3 tracks of the disk (3 tracks * 16
sectors per track = 48 sectors). Some of this was bloat. There were
other DOS systems made by third parties that used even less space, like
ProntoDOS by Beagle Bros. which only used 34 sectors (2 tracks plus two
sectors on the 3rd track) making the other 14 sectors available for file
storage. ProntoDOS was also a "fast" DOS that sped up reading and writing
3 fold. There were plenty of alternate DOS' that provided this feature,
such as Diversi-DOS, DAVID DOS, Super DOS, etc. Most of these employed
some simple hacks to the original Apple DOS to make it fast by eliminating
some double buffering that Apple DOS was doing (reading data into one
buffer then copying it to its destination buffer). These fast-DOS's
loaded the files directly into their target memory address. Some added
little features to DOS to allow it to show free sectors on a disk and
other little enhancements. But the original Apple DOS code was so tight
that there wasn't much room left over for adding functionality without
either using up more memory (which would piss off programmers) or removing
other DOS functionality (which would also piss some programmers off).
> I also have an Apple II Duodisk, which unlike the II fdd s has a
> DB25 pin female connector. Were these for the GS or did Apple
> simply upgrade the disk connections with the + or A-3. would it
> work on a II with an adapter ?
This drive connects to the Apple Floppy Drive Controller with the DB-15
connector (not DB25), not the Disk ][ interface (with the ribbon connector
cable). This drive works on the Apple //gs as well. There were also the
Unidisks (later simply called the Apple 5.25" floppy drive) which were the
counterpart to the Duodisk. Again, these connected to the new type
interface card which made the old Disk ][ interface not so much obsolete
but the new interface superceded it.
> I contacted the Toronto-area guy re the TRS-80 and am going to
> be inheriting a bunch of TRS80 stuff including the HDDs and several
> monitors as well as manuals and Tandy CP/M (??) which I wasn't aware
> of. He's also giving me some AppleII s. Must be my year for Tandy
> Apples :^)) (couldn't he'p mself.)
Cool deal. I'm glad that worked out for someone.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Sat Feb 14 1998 - 00:14:11 GMT