Got a IIGS!

[jamesk]

I'm excited I got a IIgs system. I really didn't know what to expect paying $24+shipping, like receiving a messed up monitor. I opened the CPU up to make sure the insides looked good and was surprised to find a fully populated memory expansion card. I turned it on and everything looks good. It's a ROM 3. I still need to test out the 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. I don't have any system disks at the moment but I do have a serial cable on the way for ADTPro. The only bad thing is the monitors a bit marked up with sharpie and of course the yellowing on the plastic, but still I'm pretty happy with it.

Edited October 20, 2010 by jamesk

[Hatta]

I'm excited I got a IIgs system. I really didn't know what to expect paying $24+shipping, like receiving a messed up monitor. I opened the CPU up to make sure the insides looked good and was surprised to find a fully populated memory expansion card. I turned it on and everything looks good. It's a ROM 3. I still need to test out the 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. I don't have any system disks at the moment but I do have a serial cable on the way for ADTPro. The only bad thing is the monitors a bit marked up with sharpie and of course the yellowing on the plastic, but still I'm pretty happy with it.

 

That is awesome! Great deal too. ADTPro will get you set up right. You can save yourself some floppies by using that RAM as a ramdisk and writing it with ADT Pro.

 

I'd also recommend looking into a compact mac you can boot from using Appletalk. Using GS/OS with just floppies can be pretty tedious, even 10 or 20mb on a network drive makes it so much nicer.

 

If you plan to play a lot of 8-bit Apple II games, I'd suggest getting a small TV. The NTSC color artifacting they use doesn't look right on the RGB monitor. It's nothing that makes it unplayable, but it's better with composite video.

 

So congratulations. IMO, this is the best machine Apple ever produced. Clearly it's the best gaming machine Apple ever produced.

[jamesk]

 

That is awesome! Great deal too. ADTPro will get you set up right. You can save yourself some floppies by using that RAM as a ramdisk and writing it with ADT Pro.

 

I'd also recommend looking into a compact mac you can boot from using Appletalk. Using GS/OS with just floppies can be pretty tedious, even 10 or 20mb on a network drive makes it so much nicer.

 

If you plan to play a lot of 8-bit Apple II games, I'd suggest getting a small TV. The NTSC color artifacting they use doesn't look right on the RGB monitor. It's nothing that makes it unplayable, but it's better with composite video.

 

So congratulations. IMO, this is the best machine Apple ever produced. Clearly it's the best gaming machine Apple ever produced.

 

Cool thanks for the tips. I have a TV next to the IIgs for my C64 so I'll hook it up tonight and try some games.

[desiv]

I haven't tried this yet, but there's also the Apple Game Server.

http://a2gameserver.berlios.de/

 

It's basically similar to ADT Pro, but instead of writing the games to disk, you load them into RAM and play them.

 

(So that's really nothing like ADT Pro then.. :-) I mean similar in that it's a java app that you use to transfer things to the Apple.)

 

Of course, it only works with single file games, but it looks pretty nice...

 

Good find!!!

 

I hate you... er.. sorry.. was that out loud? I mean, congratulations!!

 

desiv

[madmax2069]

Congrats on the score, i paid a bit more for mine though, i didn't get a monitor because i planned on just using my TV which works out fine, It does mess with the dithering effect though but not that bad to make things unusable).

 

but i did get a 3.5" drive and a 5.25" drive, keyboard and mouse and a 256k ram card (unpopulated) but since its a rom 03 it has just enough memory to do some things. I need to get a second 3.5" drive to make disk swapping a bit less.

 

I own a Performa 475 (internet capable) that i use to make the disks for my IIgs.

 

I plan on buying a 4mb ram card from briel computers and eventually a SSD card. I only wish that i could run into a zipGS or transwarpGS for it. definatly need to pick up a joystick for it.

 

So far i do not own any 8bit Apple 2 games to try on it. but most should work just as good as they do on a real Apple II.

 

The only thing thats wrong with mine is its switching headphone jack is stuck like i have a pair of headphones plugged in so the internal sound does not work, it will work when i short out the terminals, its very common for this to happen from what i have seen because the contacts inside the jack will corrode or break or develop dead spots.

 

I either have to replace it, clean it or hard wire it.

 

Another thing you should be on the lookout about is leaking or bulging caps in the PSU (which are known to go bad). even inspect them on the mobo. and since its a rom 3 it has a replaceable Pram battery, depending on how long it has went without power you might want to replace it unless they replaced it before they sold it (which most of the times they do not). also check the battery for damage, you do not want this battery to leak or explode because it will total the mobo.

Edited October 21, 2010 by madmax2069

[jamesk]

[quote name='madmax2069' date='Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:08 PM' timestamp='1287695297' post='2119983

I plan on buying a 4mb ram card from briel computers and eventually a SSD card. I only wish that i could run into a zipGS or transwarpGS for it. definatly need to pick up a joystick for it.

 

Another thing you should be on the lookout about is leaking or bulging caps in the PSU (which are known to go bad). even inspect them on the mobo. and since its a rom 3 it has a replaceable Pram battery, depending on how long it has went without power you might want to replace it unless they replaced it before they sold it (which most of the times they do not). also check the battery for damage, you do not want this battery to leak or explode because it will total the mobo.

 

Yeah.. I'd love to get that flash card but $180 is a bit much. If you have some soldering skills you can convert the plain Apple Memory Expansion card to 4m using old 30pin SIMMS. I'll probably do this at some point, but my 1M is good for now. I need to get an Apple Joystick too. I forgot they don't take atari controllers.

 

I'll check the caps and battery tonight.

 

ADTPro worked great. I had to change the connections on the cable I had. I got the ADTPro disk written and a GS/OS disk. I also used Apple Cider to create a 800k prodos image with digdug and wrote it to a RAM disk. Worked great, but holy cats the sound on Dig Dug is horrid. Probably because it was written for the IIE.

 

Anyone know how to run GS/OS off a RAM disk? I stuck it on a RAM disk at slot 5 disk 2. I can't boot off of disk 2 I guess.

[jamesk]

FYI if you're thinking of buying a compact flash drive for your Apple I just saw this:

 

http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php

 

"1) Floppy disk emulation at the nibble level and 2) USB flash drive support for storage of .dsk files"

 

Sounds awesome! I hope it comes out this winter.

[madmax2069]

FYI if you're thinking of buying a compact flash drive for your Apple I just saw this:

 

http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php

 

"1) Floppy disk emulation at the nibble level and 2) USB flash drive support for storage of .dsk files"

 

Sounds awesome! I hope it comes out this winter.

 

The only downside to that is No DMA or Interrupt support.

 

The one i am looking at is the MicroDrive IDE Controller at http://www.reactivemicro.com , i really want the turbo version but is $185.

 

but having a USB port would be really nice.

Edited October 22, 2010 by madmax2069

[Hatta]

The only downside to that is No DMA or Interrupt support.

 

Why do you need that? What software will I be unable to run?

 

I didn't know about that mockingboard reactivemicro carries. I'm going to have to take a serious look at that once it's back in stock.

[madmax2069]

The only downside to that is No DMA or Interrupt support.

 

Why do you need that? What software will I be unable to run?

 

I didn't know about that mockingboard reactivemicro carries. I'm going to have to take a serious look at that once it's back in stock.

 

DMA i think is mainly for speed (good if your running GSOS and programs within)

 

i remember reading about how some cards that do use dma and or interrupt do not work well with other cards if they do not support dma and or interrupt (or is it the other way around).

 

edit

 

found the info about dma

 

DMA compatibility is a major issue if you want to use an Apple

High-Speed SCSI card. If your memory card is not compatible with DMA,

you have to disable it on the SCSI card, which causes a huge performance

hit.

 

The same will go for almost any other slot card which uses DMA outside

of IIgs main RAM (which is extremely rare outside of the SCSI cards).

 

I am not to sure about interrupt though and what issues could between other cards/hardware or software.

Edited October 22, 2010 by madmax2069

[Hatta]

 

DMA compatibility is a major issue if you want to use an Apple

High-Speed SCSI card. If your memory card is not compatible with DMA,

you have to disable it on the SCSI card, which causes a huge performance

hit.

 

Why would you want a SCSI card when you have the CFFA?

 

If you need a RAM card that does DMA, Vince Briel's 4 meg GS RAM card does it.

[madmax2069]

 

DMA compatibility is a major issue if you want to use an Apple

High-Speed SCSI card. If your memory card is not compatible with DMA,

you have to disable it on the SCSI card, which causes a huge performance

hit.

 

Why would you want a SCSI card when you have the CFFA?

 

If you need a RAM card that does DMA, Vince Briel's 4 meg GS RAM card does it.

 

Yes i know, and already talked it over with bill (the original creator) and briel. only 4mb is DMA compatible, and anything above that is not. and a SCSI card is one way for you to use a CD drive on the IIgs. and using a cd rom on my IIgs is one thing i want to do (using it as a library of IIgs software if you will).

Edited October 23, 2010 by madmax2069

[Hatta]

Well, at least he's working on DMA support. Been a couple months since the last update. The suspense is killing me.

[madmax2069]

Well, at least he's working on DMA support. Been a couple months since the last update. The suspense is killing me.

 

i know right. heck its been a while since his last batch.

[jamesk]

I went ahead and bought a spare IIgs RAM card and four 30 pin 1mb simms. I'll have to do a lot of soldering, but at $18 I figure it's worth it.

[madmax2069]

I went ahead and bought a spare IIgs RAM card and four 30 pin 1mb simms. I'll have to do a lot of soldering, but at $18 I figure it's worth it.

 

Thats not bad, I didnt know that you could do that with the Apple Ram expansion board.

 

I think i am going to take the easy way out and buy the 4meg card from briel computers and buy the 30 pin 1meg simms from memory x. a bit more expensive but no risk of destroying the IIgs or ram card.

[Hatta]

I have one of Briel's cards and it works like a charm. Just plug it in and you have more RAM than you know what to do with. Here's a tip though, the slot isn't keyed so you could accidentally plug it in the wrong way. The correct way is with the RAM chips facing out, towards the case. Don't know what happens if you plug it in the wrong way.

[madmax2069]

I have one of Briel's cards and it works like a charm. Just plug it in and you have more RAM than you know what to do with. Here's a tip though, the slot isn't keyed so you could accidentally plug it in the wrong way. The correct way is with the RAM chips facing out, towards the case. Don't know what happens if you plug it in the wrong way.

 

You might get lucky and still work or you might see a bunch of that magic smoke.

Edited October 25, 2010 by madmax2069

[JamesD]

I have a CFFA and a 4MB RAM card. It's pretty fast even without DMA.

[jamesk]

You might get lucky and still work or you might see a bunch of that magic smoke.

 

Looking at the pinouts I predict nothing would happen. VCC and GND would be on the same pins, data pins would be incorrect. Not that I'd try it.

 

example: VCC is on pin 2 and 24 flip the card around and pin 2 is now at pin 24. GND is on pin 1 and 23 flip the card and pin 1 becomes pin 23.

 

Clever.

[madmax2069]

You might get lucky and still work or you might see a bunch of that magic smoke.

 

Looking at the pinouts I predict nothing would happen. VCC and GND would be on the same pins, data pins would be incorrect. Not that I'd try it.

 

example: VCC is on pin 2 and 24 flip the card around and pin 2 is now at pin 24. GND is on pin 1 and 23 flip the card and pin 1 becomes pin 23.

 

Clever.

 

i guess they foreseen something like that happening and built it like that, yes very clever indeed.

[jamesk]

I've got the 30pin simms from memoryx and the spare memory expansion card in. I'll start as soon as I get this dang light sixer off my work bench. It's holding back progress!