Boot a IIgs from a Floppy Emu?

[Anonymous Freak]

I know it has to be possible, but for the life of me I can't get my IIgs (ROM 3 if it matters,) to boot from my newly-delivered Floppy Emu.

I put the A2 firmware on, and it mounts when I boot from a floppy just fine (in either floppy or smart port hard drive mode.) But I can't get it to boot, in either mode.

Am I missing something?

 

[bigmessowires]

Do you have it configured as a 3.5 inch or 5.25 inch floppy drive? Try selecting the desired disk image from the Floppy Emu menu, then reset the GS with CONTROL-APPLE-POWER. The GS isn't always smart enough to recognize when a disk comes online after power-up, so resetting will make it check again.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I've tried 3.5 image (the System 6.0.2 installer on the included SD card,) and a SmartPort HD image.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Got it to boot, but only as the only device on the 'floppy chain' - having even a single real drive before it would cause it to try to boot only from the real drive...

Which will make it very hard to load things onto the Smartport HD image... I guess I'll just have to load things I want in to an image on my computer then load it onto the SD card.  Which, ironically, would be lots of extra work for software I have the actual disks for...

 

[olePigeon]

Oh, I think because the first disk is used by default on an Apple II.  I can't remember how to boot from the second drive.  Control-P maybe?  Or something.  I know PR#6 from the BASIC prompt will get you to disk 1, but I don't know how to get to disk 2.

If you could somehow diasychain a real floppy after the FloppyEmu, I bet it'd work as intended.

 

[Skate323k137]

Going to bump an old thread. I've been messing with this, and I don't think you can boot from the 2nd disk drive in a slot. The floppyEMU doesn't have a chain output, so it's the end of the line where ever it is.

The floppyEMU will work as a 2nd 3.5 floppy chained after a real 3.5 drive, but you must boot the actual 3.5 floppy drive. The real drive is disk 1, the floppyemu is disk 2.

Of course you can boot the FloppyEMU in all modes by itself, but when chains are involved you can really only boot from it if it's the 1st device in a slot. The only way to have it in a chain, and boot from it, is if it's in 5 1/4 mode (giving it its own slot). You can boot apple II software while still having your 3.5 chained ahead of it. At that point it seems to work like a normal chain of 3.5 > 5 1/4 drives.

 

[david__schmidt]

You're right, Skate323k137 - simply put, there is no such thing as booting from drive #2 in any slot.

 

[Gorgonops]

I definitely agree that it's pretty frustrating that the IIgs' firmware doesn't recognize SmartPort hard drives as being some other kind of "entity" than the 3.5" floppy drives and allow them to be booted. This seems like a fairly major oversight given that the rules for chaining devices actually forbid you from ever putting a SmartPort device in front of them. (IE, the rules for a chain are: "mac style" 3.5" floppy drives -> SmartPort devices -> 5 1/4" drives.) I guess Apple intended that IIgs owners that wanted a hard disk would do so via a slot and only intended SmartPort to be a solution for the IIc.

I finally gave in and ordered a slotted flash drive from ReactiveMicro... a couple weeks ago. I can't comment on how well it works or doesn't yet because my order was just updated to claim it's been shipped *last night*.

 

[Skate323k137]

My ReactiveMicro order just shipped as well. Not happy with how long it took to ship but I'm still excited to try it out.