I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

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I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

So last weekend I snagged an Apple IIGS at a yard sale (yay!) and unfortunately it didn't come with a system disk.

What it did come with is:
- keyboard/mouse/joystick/monitor
- 5.25 floppy drive
- 3.5 floppy drive
- A Tour of Your Apple IIGS 3.5 floppy disk

I have tested pretty much everything but the 5.25 floppy drive with the Tour disk, but every tutorial I've tried to follow on creating a system disk seems to just result in a disk that gets spit out when the computer boots.

I'm pretty sure I have ROM 01 - at least that's what it says when it boots

I've used both CiderPress on Windows and the unix/mac os utility to make the system disks with a usb floppy.

I've tried the images found on apple's website (here) as well as others I found while googling.

So I'm kind of at a loss as to where to go now. The only remaining clue I have is that the Tour disk I'm fairly sure is a DD disk, versus the HD disks I'm working with, and the usb floppy drive I have can't read it (from what I understand it doesn't support it).

I did try to search the existing forum posts and nothing jumped out at me, so I'm hoping one of you guys might be able to provide some advice.

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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

..

speedyG's picture
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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

Hello potatofish,

well the USB Floppy won´t get you ahead any step at all.....

Install ADT at your PC or MAC and
You will have to use ADT to get your IIGS starting up....
First of all read carefully the instructions at:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/
then:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/connectionsserial.html#MiniDIN8
there reading about IIGS Modemport cabeling
then "bootstrapping" the IIGS as explained at:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html
don´t forget to set the port at the IIGS previously correct ! Forgetting this task is a common pitfall !
Then after connection exists between PC and IIGS use ADT to move Disk-images
to the IIGS ....

I´d recommend the following order:
0) first format several 5,25 disks and 3,5 disks with ADT and then start transfer to freshly formatted disks....

1) ADT Disk with ProDOS to 5,25 disk ( thats in ADT menu slot 6, d1 )
2) IIGS Systemdisks ( GSOS Vers.6.01) to 3,5 disks ( thats in ADT menu slot 5, d 1 )
3) ProDOS Master Disk to 5,25 disk ( thats again in ADT menu slot 6, d1 )
4) IIGS Testing Disk ( thats again in ADT menu slot 5, d 1 )

the images may all be found and downloaded from Asimov to PC:
ftp.apple.asimov.net

After getting the Testdisk image you may then proceed with further testing of the correct functions of the IIGS...

And finnaly it´s a good idea to get at least from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Books/
the basic inroduction to the IIGS from Gary B. Little .....
that book will explain details on basic handling of the IIGS !
Additionally i´d recommend downloading at:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Computers/Apple%20II/Apple%20IIGS/Manuals/
and pickup from there the manuals for the IIGS !

sincerely speedyG

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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

Hello potatofish,

You have to use DD disks for both 5.25 and 3.5 disk drives.

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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

Hello potatofish,

You have to use DD disks for both 5.25 and 3.5 disk drives.

Actually, it is impossible to use an HD 5.25 floppy on an apple ii drive. But it is possible to do this on a 3.5. However, the data stored on it would not be "guaranteed".

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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

well the USB Floppy won´t get you ahead any step at all.....

Install ADT at your PC or MAC and

I should have mentioned that I was hoping to avoid getting all the cables and moving everything around to set up ADT (although crazy thanks for all the info for if I give up on floppies)

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Re: I bought an Apple IIGS at a yard sale, and need some help

Honestly, your best bet is going to be ADTPro. I wanted to go down the "authentic" route when I got my IIgs a few years back. The amount of time I spent dealing with read/write errors and new-old-stock disks that were dead out of the box could have been saved If I had just gone with one of the modern solutions.

For what it is worth and of course YMMV -

ADTPro

  • Requires a modern PC and actual II series hardware
  • You don't need to use disks if you use ADTPro's Virtual Serial Drive feature
  • Software images are readily available
  • Lot's of cables, slow compared to other "modern" methods

CFFA

  • Requires a modern PC and actual II series hardware
  • Disks are not needed as all files are stored on USB or CF
  • Software images are readily available
  • Limited availability - new run coming early 2015?
  • Expensive compared to other methods

NetBoot

  • Requires another Apple machine with localtalk and actual IIgs hardware
  • Disks are not needed as all files are stored on host
  • Software images are readily available
  • Decent storage capacity dependent on host machine
  • Requires the use and maintenance of another machine (I used a PowerMac 6100 for a long time) as a file server to host OS and files.
  • Slow.

There are other options, but these are the three I've used in the past with the most success. I'll add that I didn't have a complete system (drives, CFFA, RAM upgrade etc) when I started out. All I had was the stock IIgs, keyboard/mouse, and the monitor. I started with NetBoot, found this to be incredibly tedious and moved onto ADTPro and later CFFA when they were available.

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