[rescue] Apple II boot and other disks

[Michael A. Turner]

<snip>
> 
> But back to reality. I'm hoping the IIc comes with boot disks, the
> person who offered it to me wasn't sure, or someone else has 
> them. I may
> have them but the disks are in my basement and until tommorow 
> morning I
> have a house guest sleeping there.
> 
> I found an ftp site, apple.asimov.net, that has images of hundreds of 
> Apple II disks. Hopefully I'll be able to boot the computer, and
> copy the boot disks. The original IIc had unreliable serial ports. :-(
> 
> It seems the best way to get the images to real disks is to load them
> on a Mac LC with a IIe card and a 5 1/4" drive. Oh well, no use crying
> over sold computers, 7 years and 6000 miles ago. 
> 
> More later when I get the computer, and Walter if I get boot disks
> and can copy them for you, your IIe will not stay unbooted.
>  
> Geoffrey S. Mendelson gsm at mendelson.com 972-54-608-069
> Icq/AIM Uin: 2661079 MSN IM: geoffrey_mendelson at hotmail.com 
> (Not for email)


	I had an apple ][c at one time so I can offer some pointer. First
off the ][c did not need any boot disk. It would boot and run without having
anything to boot from, you just could not do much at all. Load from a disk
and a minimal usage of basic is all you could do.

	About those floppies. Do not get to excited about them until after
you have received the ][c and tested the floppy drive. My original one died
from a floppy controller failure. IT could read disks just fine, but the
second it wrote back to the disk for any reason (saving a file, updating
game info) it would write over track 00. This was the boot track for the
disk. Whatever you had been working on would also crash as the data was
placed in the wrong areas. you would reboot and viola! the disk was no good
anymore. 

	Since then I have had my hands on several of these systems and every
one has suffered the same fate, invariably before I got my hands on it. I
have also talked to people about them and have heard the same fate has
happened to dozens more. It would seem that they all failed en-mass sometime
around 1989. I have heard of some that worked as late as 1991 but that was
the latest. 

	The reason I point all this out is it would be a shame for you to go
buy 5 1/4 disks, download all this software, only to fin out that the ][c
while appearing functional, is really toast. The one thing a ][c in this
conditions is good for though is fixing brain fried ][+ and ][e systems. you
can swap the main chips over with nothing more than a pocket knife. 

Michael A. Turner
Systems Engineer WHRO
michael.turner at whro.org
http://www.whro.org