Apple IIGS disk and hard drive formatting help please!

[A Black Falcon]

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but I hope that someone can help...

 

So, I gave in to childhood memories (kind of) in my most recent addition to my collection when I got an Apple IIGS.  I say 'kind of' because I mostly remember the Apple IIe and not the GS, but still, it's an Apple II-line machine.  I've got a bunch of stuff for it since but it's been one seriously steep learning curve; this machine is extremely complex and hard to learn in a way that other old computers I have (TI99/4A, C64/128, VIC-20...) aren't.  That I am used to PCs and not Macs (I've been a PC user since the early '90s) and this is the first Apple machine I've ever owned doesn't make figuring out how to do anything in the OS any easier, that's for sure.

 

But I've figured a lot of it out, and really like this machine for the most part.  I got lucky and got a working  IIGs with the original monitor and a SCSI card for a reasonable price.  It is the revision C regular-speed card and not the high speed card, so it's slow, but still, it's really cool to have.  It is a ROM 01 system. To that, I ended up getting a SCSI2SD v5.5 card for a hard drive; I know the Compact Flash-based modern cards you can get would be much faster, but this was a bit cheaper and uses much more convenient SD cards. I don't own any Compact Flash anything, I'd need a reader for them and such if I got one of those cards.  With external USB power the SCSI2SD works, it's just got really slow transfer speeds when moving files to or from it on the Apple II.  Game load times and such are fine though, as expected with how small they are.  I also ended up getting a modern 8MB RAM expansion, and have been running GSOS 6.04 on the SCSI2SD.  It works and I've tried a bunch of games and such on it, great stuff.

 

I got a compatible keyboard and mouse for it and they work great.   I also replaced the clock/settings battery.  Fortunately the old, original one showed no sign of leaking. For disk drives, all I currently have are two 5.25" disk drives, a DuoDisk drive and a solo 5.25" drive, for original Apple II/IIe software running from disk.  Both seem to work, though I have some issues that ... may be software and not hardware problems I think?  I really don't know, please help.  I do want to get a working 3.5" drive for Apple IIGS software but haven't gotten one yet.  I will eventually...

 

So what are the problems I made this thread for?  There are two main ones and they are really, really frustrating me.

 

1) Hard drive partitioning.  So, as I said, I have a SCSI2SD 5.5 connected to the IIGS via its original regular speed revision C Apple SCSI card.  Note, the SCSI card is in slot 7. I've got an 8GB micro SD card in it, partitioned into four 2GB virtual drives in the SCSI2SD configuration software (on my PC, which is right next to the IIGS).  Here's the issue though, what do I need to do to get more partitions on this thing?  I know that natively the Apple II only supports two 32MB ProDos partitions per drive.  In the GSOS 6.04 Finder, all I can do is reformat existing partitions, or format one partition on a drive.  When I added the "fourth" virtual drive to the micro SD card for example, GSOS recognized it and let me put one partition on the drive, either a 32MB ProDOS partition or a 2GB HFS partition.  If there's a way in GSOS to do more than one partition, which I very much need, I have absolutely no idea where it is.  Is there some tool for this on a disc somewhere?  I did find a (Apple IIe or such) drive partitioning tool from Apple that let me create two 32MB partitions per drive, but that's all.  I think I heard that on a IIGS there is some way of having more than two 32MB ProDos partitions on the same drive?  What does THIS, do you need a High Speed SCSI card or a CFFA3000 (these are now insanely expensive, no thanks) or something? Drive partitioning has me incredibly confused, why does GSOS only let you format ONE partition per drive, that makes no sense.  Unless there's a tools disk I'm missing with the key tool on it that works with the regular, not high speed, SCSI card?  (There probably is, this system has a million tools disks available online...)

 

1-A) The other drive partitioning problem I have is with the Apple IIGS and CiderPress on my PC often not recognizing the partitions on the micro SD card.  Now, my PC SD card reader sadly broke a few days ago and I haven't bought a new one yet so I can't add files to the IIGS at the moment (I will get a replacement), but managing to get partitions that both the PC and Apple IIGS can both see was really frustrating.  Last time I checked, of the partitions on that card, the Apple IIGS currently sees, on "virtual drive" one, two 32MB ProDos partitions.  I imagine there's some way to format the rest of it as HFS or more ProDos partitions but as I said if so I have no idea how.  The second and third virtual drives have only one 2GB HFS partition each, though I may change this if I can, more ProDos partitions as well as HFS ones would be better (since you can't load 8-bit software from HFS).  CiderPress on my PC cannot see the second or third virtual drives AT ALL however so the only way to get software on them is to copy it over excruciatingly slowly, one ProDos partition at a time, on the one non-boot ProDos partition on drive one that CiderPress does see.  This is really a pain, why is this?  Drive four currently has just one ProDos partition and needs more.  I'm not sure if CiderPress can see it or not (again, broken SD reader).

 

1-B) For one more comment on CiderPress, it's a good program but it sure would be nice if it could format drives with an Apple Partition Map that the computer could recognize!  You know, with choices for the size and number of partitions and such.  That it can't is seriously annoying and a big pain, honestly... there are ways around this problem, as I have read online, but that'd make it a lot simpler.  It took a while to just manage to get a partition on the SD card that the computer could actually see.  I had to do a fair amount of research online to get to that point.  But anyway, I got that done and it boots fine now.  I just don't want to mess up that boot partition, heh...

 

With how many problems I've had with the 'put files on the SD Card on my PC and then put it into the Apple',  I think I'm going to get an ADTPro cable and such just to make the transfer process maybe easier...

 

But with that

 

 

2) Floppy disk drives.  So, as I said I have those two 5.25" drives... well three really with how one is a DuoDisk.  The solo drive and the first drive in the DuoDisk can both load the handful of legit Apple II disks that I have if you boot the system from the drive.  Turn computer on with boot set to boot from the floppy drives first, it'll boot the disk.  Okay, that's good.  There are glitches in the program in some disks but that could well be issues with the disks themselves, I'm not sure; it's the same on both drives.   I don't know what the problem is, but the disks do boot and run.   I haven't managed to quit out of any of these disks to a command prompt that allows me to use the "catalog" or "init" commands, when I try from the prompt it just gives an error message, but maybe I just don't have disks that let me do that?  I don't know this format well enough to know.  But the few legit disks I have do boot on these drives, and you can use the programs.

 

2-A) However, in GSOS (6.04), I can't manage to get the disk drives to work AT ALL.  I can't format disks, can't load these disks or view the files on them, can't do anything.  My guess is that the disks are copy protected, and on the Apple II a copy protected disk can't even be VIEWED in the OS?  That's got to be it, yes?  That's a pretty insanely annoying restriction if true!  Legit disks that only function if booted cold but otherwise act like they're blank disks with unknown formatting on them... how strange. Okay though, if that's what it is I get it. 

 

2-B) That's not the main problem, however.  Formatting blank disks is.  I have a box of IBM formatted blank DS/DD 5.25" disks. I've used them on my PC and, after reformatting them on a  Commodore disk drive, on my C128 for Commodore 64 software as well.  [I don't have a disk emulator for the Commodore, only an XU1541.) These disks work great on my Commodore 128 and 1541 disk drive. (Yes, I know that I can only use one side of each disk because they only have a notch on one side, these are single-sided drives, and I don't have a disk notcher.  I badly need to get one but still have not.  But for the Apple this will only matter once I actually figure out why I can't format them at all...) I'm pretty sure that the Apple II uses double density disks, just like the C64/128, so these should be the correct disks. 

 

So why do I get an error message every time that I try to format a disk in GSOS?  In the DuoDisk, when I try to format a disk in GSOS in the first drive it fails almost immediately with error "Unknown error: $0008".  In the second drive in the DuoDisk it seems to work better, and I get the expected disk drive sounds... until it fails out with "Unknown Error: $00A8" after some time making noises.  It does not format the disks.  In the solo drive the same thing happens as this one, a fairly quick Unknown Error: $00A8 and it gives up.  I think the system is good, it claims to be working in the self-test.  These same disks can load stuff if booted straight from the disk.  So what in the WORLD is the problem here, this is really an issue... I need to be able to use real disks in order to use an older computer, and you can't do much of that when it won't format them!  Of course it won't read formatted disks either, as I mention above, but that could be a copy protection issue?  Unless I am missing some file the system needs to make disk drives work correctly in GSOS?  I've tried a few games that have a 'format save disk' function and I have no more luck there, it doesn't work.  I've seen (quite incorrect) 'the disk is write protected' errors for example.  I need help.  Is the problem the drives, the disks, the computer?  Or am I just missing some critical step?

 

Lastly, on a related note:

 

3) How exactly do I add things to the GSOS's Apple menu on the left? System Tools or whatever.  And which should I want to add?

 

On one final note, it sure would be nice if you could make the screen image wider, the borders on this monitor are massive and the monitor really small (this is the official IIGS monitor; it's 12", right).  One of the knobs makes the image taller, but you can't make it any wider.  Oh well, it's awesome to have the real monitor and that's what's most important by far.  That and that as far as I can tell everything works perfectly hardware-wise.

 

I'm sorry this is so long but I've been thinking about and working on this machine a lot for some weeks now and I'm kind of stuck.  I particularly would like any advice with the floppy disk formatting problem.