Thrift Store find: Apple IIgs

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_ellie.ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue Jun 20 20:44:05 2000

> So... now that I have two machines that want to have 3.5" drives and
> no copies of DOS 3.3 on that medium, is it possible to aquire it anywhere?
> I have Macs, etc., so I can make a 3.5" disk from an Apple disk image
> if that's what it takes.

You can get ProDOS and GS/OS (usually just called System, ala Mac) on
3.5" floppy. I'd pick up a 5.25" drive from somewhere for DOS 3.3 stuff.
Flea markets and surplus stores seem to have plenty of them lately. I
don't know what the latest System that will run on ROM 01 is. You can
also look into GNO/ME, which was a pseudo-unix clone that runs under GS/OS.
Last I heard it was made freeware, but it might be hard to find.

> Also, are there any ways I can expand this puppy? I happen to have a
> couple of old Apple double disk drives (the kind that came with the IIe);
> does anyone know of a diagram to make an adapter for the 19-pin connector
> that the newer computers take?

Other than additional floppy drives and maxing out the memory, I'd recommend
a SCSI card and a smallish external hard drive. The SCSI cards can usually
read CDROMs with the right System and drivers. Might be useful to those of
us that archive things to CDROM. Single session/small disk only, though.
The cards are somewhat hard to find used with drivers, but as of a couple
years ago you could get new ones, if you were willing to part with the dough.
I believe there are now IDE cards available for the // series as well, but
that's a fairly new thing.

The GS is generally compatible with all cards that a //e can use. You can
build quite a system in short order. My system is a ROM 03, 4MB, 256 MB HD
System 6, 2x3.5",2x5.25". Networks via AppleTalk. Has a PC Transporter
and 5.25" 360K Transdrive, which I mostly use for file transfer from PCs, but
it can also run MS-DOS. I also occasionally pop in a CP/M card. (Kick me, I
like machines with multiple processors.) The hard drive is overkill, but it
was the smallest one I had on hand when I got the SCSI card. Some day I'll
replace it with something more contemporary to the rest of the system.

Eric
Received on Tue Jun 20 2000 - 20:44:05 BST