I have recently gotten back into retro gaming and have been playing old Apple ][ games from when I was a kid. But using an emulator is not the same thing. I would much rather play the games on an actual. Asuming that I was able to track down a working Apple ][, is it possible to create working game disk from the roms that I use in my emulator ? What equipment would I need and how would I go about making a disk ? Thanks.
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I forgot. Where would I find usable Apple ][ disks....if that's even possible.
It's better when it's real, that's for sure.
Aside: the various home computer communities don't call games 'roms' the way, say, MAME, Atari 2600, or SNES ones do. They're just 'games,' 'disks,' or 'images.' Using 'Rom' in the Apple II community has an altogether different meaning than 'game.'
Anyway - back to the real question.
First, you'll need to be able to bootstrap your shiny new Apple II. You might get some physical disks with your purchase, and then you're good to go. If not, the ADTPro project aims to help you out there:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net
ADTPro will also do the work of reconstituting physical diskettes for you by transmitting the raw sectors of the disk over to the Apple II via serial, audio, or Ethernet (depending on your machine's capabilities).
There are many places to get Apple II games. You can try many of them out before downloading them over at the Virtual Apple:
http://www.virtualapple.org/
If you end up with an IIgs, you might also see What is the GS:
http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za
Asimov is a fairly authoritative archive, although it uses a more raw (ftp) interface:
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images
Now that my PS2 to ASCII keyboard interface is done, I've started work again on my Disk II to PC adapter card. In the future you may be able to plug a Disk II drive directly into your modern PC and copy a DSK image directly to or from a floppy disk.
Last night I plugged my proof of principal board in for the first time and did an preliminary checkout of the power supply section. No smoke and only a minor issue with the -12 volt supply. I don't expect this to be actually functional for a long time (could be a year or more), but there is hope on the horizon.
Regards,
Mike Willegal
Mike, this sounds great. Will it be a PCI slot card sort of thing?
The host interface is actually pretty wide open right now. I'm planning on moving to a USB interface, much cleaner and more portable than a parallel bus type approach. I could go with a standard USB mass storage approach, or a proprietary USB scheme such as serial over USB using a FDDI chip set. If I went with the mass storage approach, I think someone would have to develop DOS filesystem drivers for each supported host. Would be kind of cool to mount a DOS 3.3 disk on a modern machine, but I think it might be a lot more work than doing something proprietary.
I suppose either way, that Apple II emulators could be enhanced to allow direct support of these floppy drives, which would also be cool.
If anyone is interested in helping with the host interface, let me know.
For now I'm using a simple RS232 serial port in order to speed up development of the embedded RWTS system. I am using a directly connected console to enter commands and see the results of the disk operations.
Note that it will be very difficult to support copy protected disks with this device.
Regards,
Mike Willegal
First: Spottedfeather,
You can find original Apple II game disks up on eBay. Depending
on the game the prices are not bad. Sometimes folks are selling
off their entire collection.
Second: Mike,
It sounds like you're off and running again. lol You can sign
me up for an interface when you're ready.
So, from what I read of the program, it transfers disk images from Apple ][ disk to .dsk files on a modern computer, right ? Does it also transfer .dsk files to physical Apple ][ disk that work on a real Apple ? Also, the program's page says "The ProDOS ethernet version of the ADTPro client program is named ADTPROETH on the distribution diskette" Does this mean they send you an actual Apple ][ with the program on it ? I don't quite understand.
ADTPro is bi-directional: you can transfer a physical floppy up to the host as a .dsk image, and you can take a .dsk image and send it back down to the Apple to reconstitute a physical floppy. Send vs. Receive.
The "distribution diskette" part is talking about the client software that is included on the (virtual) disk image of ADTPro. It comes in three flavors, and you pick one that matches your connection type (Serial, Ethernet, or Audio).
yes, but I think that ADT transfers to the Apple II directly. You need the Apple II hardware and a connection between the Apple II and the modern computer.
I think that you can connect the ADT program to an actual Apple II using ethernet, serial communications, and cassette. I am pretty sure that the creation of the disk must done using an Apple II with an Apple 5 1/4" floppy drive connected to it. No, obviously they don't provide real Apple II hardware to do this.
Another way to run games and programs on an Apple II it to use a card, in a slot of the Apple II, that allows you use compact flash cards. With this method, I think you can copy the programs to the flash card using a modern computer. And then, put the compact flash card in the card in the Apple II and use it like a hard drive. This has some advantages over using the Apple disks.
http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php
Spottedfeather,
mmphosis is partially right. A CFFA Card or hardcard would be a good way to go and Rich Dreher would be one of the folks to check out. There are several others. The main thing about CFFA cards is that the format can either be DOS 3.3 or PRODOS. I for one am running two IIe's and two IIGS's with CFFA cards. You still have to transfer files from the PC or Mac to your apple and convert them for use.
Another way to play games on a real (serial-port equipped) Apple ][, with the advantage that you don't need floppy disks at all:
Link #1
Link #2
Obviously there are limitations to this, but it looks interesting.
--Peace
*Smacks own head*
D'oh, I meant to mention Apple Game Server too... yes, that'll blast any of a number of games to play at your machine without disks of any sort over a Super Serial-compatible port.
But that device page says that you can't run games straight off the memory card. If not, then how would you run them ?
There are lots of games stored as files with the file types B, A, and I: Binary, Applesoft, and Integer programs. These type of files could be loaded directly from the memory card and run. You may also have to have Basic loaded into the language card.
For copy protected games and games that use specifics of a particular disk format, you will probably need a disk drive.
just about any other old Apple II software that you want is to use this:
[url http://www.thesvd.com/SVD/]
hooked up to your modern computer. The really good thing, for mac users, is that he is starting to work on a newer version that will work with Macs.
Dean