Newbie lost in front of a IIgs

[superpantoufle]

Hi there,

Though a hardcore macuser (and collector) for a long, long time, I have to confess that I am a complete newbie in the Apple II world. I do own an Apple IIgs I got from a friend many years ago. Back then, I remember playing a bit with her and her huge load of floppies, and she suddenly stopped booting. I tried to troubleshoot her a little, and then stored her in my parents' attic.

She's been waiting there for the last decade or so. And now I thought I'd have a try at making her boot again!

What I have is an Apple IIgs with keyboard and mouse, an "AppleColor RGB Monitor", and two 3.5'' floppy drives. Inside the IIgs is what looks like a memory extension card, and a SCSI card.

She starts up fine, and I can play with the control panel. But when I insert a floppy she'll refuse it, and display "Check startup device". She obviously can't find anything to boot from. I read that interesting thread, thinking I was in the same situation. All the floppies were stored along with the IIgs in my parents' attic where it can be pretty hot in summer, and quite cold in winter. So I assumed all the floppies just died from bad storage condition. So I made a new boot floppy as described in the above thread, but that wouldn't boot either.

Then I just tried to stick one of the old floppies in a Mac. And I amazingly saw it mount just fine on the Mac's desktop, with a ProDOS icon and all its files.

So it seems that my floppies aren't dead, but my drives could be (both of them, I tried to switch them to no avail). The eject mechanism do work, as do the red activity LED on their front.

Any suggestion? What could I try? Thanks in advance!

 

[Unknown_K]

Do you have a disk drive head cleaner?

 

[david__schmidt]

Then I just tried to stick one of the old floppies in a Mac. And I amazingly saw it mount just fine on the Mac's desktop, with a ProDOS icon and all its files.
So it seems that my floppies aren't dead, but my drives could be (both of them, I tried to switch them to no avail). The eject mechanism do work, as do the red activity LED on their front.

Not all ProDOS disks are bootable. Even if formatted correctly, unless they have files named PRODOS and BASIC.SYSTEM on them, they won't get past the "not a startup disk" screen. Mount a few in the mac and see if any have those files. If so, try to boot them in the IIgs. If _that_ doesn't work - then the IIgs drives must be dirty or otherwise failing.

 

[magnusfalkirk]

Another possibility: since you say you can get into the Control Panel go to the Control Panel and select Slots, look at the Startup Slot setting and make sure it either says Scan or 5, which is the Slot for the 3.5 drives. If it doesn't say Scan or 5 change it with the arrow keys to one of those two settings.

The Apple IIGS expects to find 3.5 drives in Slot 5, 5.25 drives in Slot 6 and hard drive controller cards in Slot 7. There are more possibilities but the important thing is to let the computer know where to look for a disk to start up with.

Dean

 

[Unknown_K]

Make sure the 3.5" drives are first and the 5.25" drives are connected after them.

 

[superpantoufle]

Do you have a disk drive head cleaner?

Do you mean those "fake floppies" with a cleaning brush on the disk? I don't, but I've seen some a while ago. What's the best way to clean a drive otherwise?

Another possibility: since you say you can get into the Control Panel go to the Control Panel and select Slots, look at the Startup Slot setting and make sure it either says Scan or 5, which is the Slot for the 3.5 drives. If it doesn't say Scan or 5 change it with the arrow keys to one of those two settings.
The Apple IIGS expects to find 3.5 drives in Slot 5, 5.25 drives in Slot 6 and hard drive controller cards in Slot 7. There are more possibilities but the important thing is to let the computer know where to look for a disk to start up with.

The Control Panl is set to Scan. And the IIgs obviously scans its drives, since the LED on them blinks and then ejects. And thanks for those interesting bits of information that I didn't know!

Not all ProDOS disks are bootable. Even if formatted correctly, unless they have files named PRODOS and BASIC.SYSTEM on them, they won't get past the "not a startup disk" screen. Mount a few in the mac and see if any have those files. If so, try to boot them in the IIgs. If _that_ doesn't work - then the IIgs drives must be dirty or otherwise failing.

That's indeed interesting. Thanks! Actually I assumed not all disks were bootable, but I didn't know those file names. But I don't get a "not a startup disk" screen, only a "check startup device", when I insert a disk and when I don't.

Ok, so it seems my best bet is to try and clean the drives, right? Is there any easy way to do this? I already tried to take them apart, but having the plastic case off don't make it easier to reach inside.

Thanks to all for your support!

And btw, another question: I see what looks like a SCSI card inside the IIgs. Assuming it's true, could I boot from a SCSI drive? Like could I format one of my old drives in ProDOS and simply hook it to the IIgs?

 

[joshc]

What's the best way to clean a drive otherwise?

Blow compressed air into it.

 

[david__schmidt]

Ok, so it seems my best bet is to try and clean the drives, right? Is there any easy way to do this? I already tried to take them apart, but having the plastic case off don't make it easier to reach inside.

Some options for you:

http://www.welovemacs.com/acc-6000.html

http://apple2.info/wiki/index.php?title=Floppy_Drives#3.5_in._Drives

You may well need to dismantle the drive further to get at the heads and give them a cleaning with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol, if you elect not to get an automatic cleaner. It's a delicate job, so be careful if you undertake it.

You might go the bare-metal bootstrapping route (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html) and see if you can get a catalog of any of your disks once you get ProDOS running via the serial port.

Getting a SCSI drive to a bootable ProDOS state will be a tricky business indeed. If you have a SCSI mac that could do the partitioning and formatting (plus copying over the ProDOS system files) it might just work. You'd need an earlier version of Mac OS than OSX, though.

 

[Unknown_K]

I found a new 5.25" head cleaning diskette at a thrift last year. Mostly it is the 3.5" drives that end up needing cleaning. A large q-tip with 99.99% alcohol would do the job.

 

[Dog Cow]

And btw, another question: I see what looks like a SCSI card inside the IIgs. Assuming it's true, could I boot from a SCSI drive? Like could I format one of my old drives in ProDOS and simply hook it to the IIgs?

If it is a SCSI card, you are one lucky guy! Yes, you can attach a hard drive or other SCSI device and start from it.

Also: beware of old cleaning diskettes. If there's something not-so-nice on the surface (after all these years) you have a good chance of permanently destroying the drive head. Proceed with caution, or use a never-before-opened cleaning disk if you can.

 

[barana]

G'day superpantufle

1.your scsi and other cards may be causing conflicts pull it out and try booting without that in place.

2.The iigs seems be telling you the drive may be defective , disconnect the 3.5' and try the 5.25 drive's operation.

3.Access the cda control panel by pressing escape control open apple in that order after switching on, select slots and see if your slot 5 is set to your card if so change it with the arrows,quit and reboot. see how that goes.

4.If your drives refuse to work your iwm custom chip maybe blown.

6. No success? try Rubywand's FAQ http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2FDRIVE.html

BTW superpantoufle - Your handle is vey unique - where did it come from? - it sounds like 'pancake' to me.

 

[barana]

did u have any joy?

 

[superpantoufle]

Hi all and many thanks for the replies!

Actually I still didn't take the time to further investigate those drives. And I just put the IIgs back on its shelf this morning, to make some room on my "surgery table" for the PowerMacintosh 9600 I received today.

So it'll be a couple more days/weeks till I have another look at those drives. I'll keep you guys updated, I promise!

@ barana: obviously you're no french speaker! "pantoufle" is the french for "slipper". And SP are my initials. It's a pseudo I got back from highschool, a long time ago. It seemed I was a bit lazy…

 

[Rockin' Kat]

Juat a warniing about cleaning disks and Apple 5.25 drives(and any other other single sided 5.25 drives you may find on classic computers) Using a cleaning disk one one of thse can rip off the pad that applies pressure to the non-write side of the floppy disk.

You need to cover the hole on the non-write side of the head cleaning disket before using it so that this does not happen... I generally cut a small peice of scotch tape, stick it to a larger one, and then stick that over the hole.. the smaller peice keeps t he larger peice from sticking to the cleaning pad in the disk.

Another thing I didn't see mentioned. If drives are disconnected/connected while the IIgs is turned on, it is very easy to fry the floppy controller chip.

Also, if you have a Mac with a floppy port, you can test your 3.5 drives(DO NOT TRY THIS WITH 5.25 DRIVES!) on it to see if they work.

 

[barana]

try booting with only one three point five inch drive connected.

 

[superpantoufle]

Ok, it's time for some feed-back!

I finally went further with cleaning those drives, since I recently got a nice Apple ][ Europlus and I needed the IIgs to be working in order to format some ProDOS 5.25'' floppies for it. Well I took both my 3.5'' drives apart, and manged to clean them the best I could with isopropyl alcohol and WD-40. I happily soon saw drive two working again, but sadly I must have broken something in drive one. I then tried two spare bare drives I had lying around untested from a dead Plus and a dead 512K (water damage in a school a long time ago), with no luck for one of them, but the other one works fine!

So my IIgs flies again. Thanks to all of you guys! If you don't mind, I'll continue this thread with other newbie questions.

And already the next question: there was a fan badly taped inside my IIgs, on the expansion slots holes. The tape went off with tape, and now that fan is lying on the mobo. According to pictures of the IIgs innards I found on the net, stock IIgs didn't have a fan, right? Can I safely remove it? Or otherwise where is the best place to tape it/screw it back?

 

[david__schmidt]

According to pictures of the IIgs innards I found on the net, stock IIgs didn't have a fan, right?

Right. You can safely remove it if you don't have any unnatural cards inside the case pumping out a lot of heat. A hard drive, for example, might fall into that category.

 

[superpantoufle]

I do have only a 2 Mb Ram card. I also have what I think is a SCSI card, not installed as of yet. So it should be ok, I hope. Thanks!

 

[Dog Cow]

stock IIgs didn't have a fan, right?

Right.

Can I safely remove it?

Probably. If someone put a fan in there, it was probably because the GS had a lot of expansion cards which were making heat.

Or otherwise where is the best place to tape it/screw it back?

From what I've read, the fan was generally set to blow into the power supply.