Starting with ][e PDS card, and I'm stuck

[CJ_Miller]

I bought Scott's LC475 recently, hoping to use it as a general 040 Mac and also home for mr ][e card. My parents bought a Franklin Ace for me when I was a wee thing and I likec it, but don't remember how to get around in ][ land anymore.

What I have done so far is formatted the 2GB drive to have a 10MB ProDOS partition, and the rest in HFS for System 7.5.5. This is a nice OS and still allows booting in 24-bit mode which the card needs. So now I have the 7.5.5 system set up, and the ProDOS partition appears on the desktop. I installed the last version of the ][e card software from Apple. The program boots me to a ][e screen, which is really cool to see! I have been able to hit command-control-escape to get to the options panel.

I do not have much software. Actually, I have two disk images which are one of the main reasons why I needed the card. They might work properly from the card, or I might write them to floppy to run on a real ][. Problem is that when I try dragging the .dsk images to the ProDOS partition I get errors. And then the space is taken up on the partition, even though it does not show the files there! Basically, I have no idea how to access software images on this thing to use or write to disk. My closest experience is the STeam and PowerST emulators for Atari ST which have a hard drive folder which I can drop images into, but this apparently does not work the same way.

Can anybody help me understand what I am doing wrong here? Also, any pointers for basic ][ navigation would be much appreciated. I know that GIMF and am looking around, but only slowly finding details here and there,

 

[applefreak]

http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/appleiiecard.html

http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/internet.html

 

[CJ_Miller]

http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/appleiiecard.htmlhttp://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/internet.html

Great, thanks for those links! I had seen the first on my travels and was looking for it. The second page I had not seen, so I am poking around more of the site now.

Problem still stands that I do not know how to get ANYTHING onto the ProDOS partition, including the image-handling tools they talk about. Maybe the solution is there somewhere, I've got more reading to do!

 

[applefreak]

> floppy drive

the Unidisk 5.25 is not compatible with the Apple IIe Card

 

[CJ_Miller]

It has been surprisingly hard for me to find any instructions for actually using a ][ system, but I finally found this, which is a great help:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/apple2faq/app2doscmdfaq.html

 

[CJ_Miller]

the Unidisk 5.25 is not compatible with the Apple IIe Card

But my A9M0107 should be, if it works!

 

[applefreak]

It has been surprisingly hard for me to find any instructions for actually using a ][ system

http://www.apple-iigs.info/dociie.php

most in english

see also the other links on the site

Understanding the Apple IIe pdf

Apple II - IIe

DOS 3.3 and ProDOS

and there is lot more .......

i think there is more to find about the Apple II then on the current computers



______________________________________________________________________________

my apple collection

.

 

[CJ_Miller]

Thanks for those helpful links, Applefreak!

I have been plugging away all night, but still can't get things working. According to the ][e card panel, my ProDOS partition is D2, S5. So I have tried typing many various versions of:

CAT, D2 ,S5

CAT, D2 ,S5, V0

CAT D2,S5

CATALOG, D2, S5

etc

Somehow I can't even access the partition, and I really don't understand why. Supposedly you can just drop files into it from the desktop, but so far as I can tell it is just a black hole. Everything I do is a syntax error even after reading all night. Looks like I still have a lot to learn here, but I wish I at least knew if my setup was working properly.

Also the ImageConverter program is causing me problems. "Simply" drop any Apple 2 disk image to have it converted? It ignores my .dsk files.

I have never had such a difficult time getting started on any computer system!

 

[olePigeon]

I have a IIe card. As far as I'm aware, you can't simply copy a .dsk file to the ProDOS partition and just use it like a floppy.

You have to use a program such as ADTPro and copy the contents of the .dsk file to the ProDOS partition.

This requires an OS X capable Mac (preferably one with a serial port), a USB to Serial adapter (if you don't have a serial port), and a serial cable that runs from your Mac to the modem port on the host computer of the IIe card.

You then actually boot the IIe over the serial connection into ADTPro. From the ADTPro Mac, you can send it a .DSK file and write to a floppy disk or, I think, the ProDos partition.