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Along came a IIGS, part II

Mezrabad

Entry posted by Mezrabad

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As EricBall very correctly pointed out, it wasn't long after figuring out that this machine might work, that I realized that it's little better than a door stop without a floppy drive.

 

Fortunately for me, I discovered the CFFA! This is a card that plugs into the innards of an Apple IIGS with a Compact Flash card as a hard drive. You can have as many 32MB hard drive images as you can fit on a compact flash. So, I quickly, and without really reading anything about it, ordered one and then ordered a compact flash card with 256 MB on it. I would have the equivalent of 8 32MB hard drives for my IIGS. Floppy drive-Schmoppy drive!

 

Well, of course, I still needed a floppy drive. The CFFA comes with a 16MB CF card in it with everything needed to boot the computer up in ProDos... and then what? I write programs in Applesoft BASIC?

 

Okay, so more homework was needed. Turns out, there's a program called CiderPress and that let's you create images that you can then put on a compact flash card! The CF card has to be formatted already, though, by software on an Apple II. The CF Card is not hot swappable, meaning if you boot up one card, you can't switch to an unformatted card while the thing is turned on. So... my 256 MB card remained in it's little wrapper until...

 

Last month! I finally got an Apple 5.25" drive. I was able to boot up the IIGS with the CF card that came with the CFFA, format one of the floppies in the drive and copy over some necessary stuff to the floppy. Then I turned the machine off, stuck in my 256MB CF, booted from the floppy and formatted the first two 32MB sections of the 256MB card.

 

Now, I could copy some stuff onto the CF card using Ciderpress and some awesome images some wonderful people had already created and Presto! I'm running the awesome graphical interface of the IIGS 6.0.1... wait, hmm, not enough memory. Okay, we can try 5.4.1... hmm, hey, this doesn't seem to work either.. okay, how about Prodos 4! Hmm, still graphical, wait.. how do I move the cursor? Can't I use the keyboard?

 

Turns out, that without a Mouse, you can't use any of the graphical interfaces! Not that they'd be any fun to use without a mouse, but I was hoping to be able to tab around for a little bit. Also, turns out that the programs I'd flashed onto the other virtual hard drive were all programs to be run in that mouse control interface.

 

So, I've ordered a mouse and am still waiting for it to arrive, but this is a lesson for those who would just dive right in to this sort of thing without doing their homework. To my credit I only posted on a message board once asking for help (I'm back to doing some research while I wait for the mouse.)

 

Back to the drawing board as they used to say. My goal is to somehow boot up some of the older games that were on the Apple II, but they didn't use ProDOS, they just used something called DOS 3.3. So, while I'm waiting for that darn mouse, I'll be looking for some Apple II disks to see if I can get something to run from them.

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EricBall

I understand where you're coming from.

 

My parents bought a CoCo of eBay thinking my son could use it to learn programming, much as I did 25 years ago. Good intentions, but it lacks the cassette recorder & manuals to make that possible. (Yes, I could also get those. It's just the time & trouble.)

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SpiceWare
I understand where you're coming from.

 

My parents bought a CoCo of eBay thinking my son could use it to learn programming, much as I did 25 years ago. Good intentions, but it lacks the cassette recorder & manuals to make that possible. (Yes, I could also get those. It's just the time & trouble.)

yeah, today's systems aren't very conducive to get someone into coding.

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Mezrabad
I understand where you're coming from.

 

My parents bought a CoCo of eBay thinking my son could use it to learn programming, much as I did 25 years ago. Good intentions, but it lacks the cassette recorder & manuals to make that possible. (Yes, I could also get those. It's just the time & trouble.)

yeah, today's systems aren't very conducive to get someone into coding.

 

I agree, is there even a from of BASIC available with Windows or Mac when you get it, or does one have to get "Visual BASIC"? The closest thing to "programing" available to some kid messing with a computer would be HTML, I think. PHP with a little effort (although getting my computer setup to use Apache and run PHP wasn't exactly something I think a 10 year old could just jump into.) I remember learning and being able to abuse the concept of 10 PRINT "Hello World" 20 GOTO 10 at a fairly early age (Thanks, Radio Shack!), there's not really an opportunity to do that now a days while out shopping for crap with the 'rents. :ponder:

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Nelio

Interesting comments! I had never thought of that! Indeed, nowadays there's no motivation (nor really a means to) for someone to start writing some rudimentary programs on a computer with a fresh install. I guess one could write some BATch files, but even that isn't too straightforward and the motivation for doing it is questionable.

 

My first programming experience was with MSX BASIC. Oh, the memories...

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