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Re: Hi everyone, New here with an Apple IIGS [message #90 is a reply to message #89] Tue, 01 March 2016 09:46 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Dagen is currently offline  Dagen
Messages: 27
Registered: August 2014
Location: United States
Member
Hi Tony,

Unfortunately, most IIgs software requires a 3.5" drive, or hard disk. However, one of the coolest parts of the Apple IIgs is the extremely high level of backward compatibility with the earlier 8-bit Apple IIs. So if you can get some 5.25" disk, by all means do, and then fill them up with older Apple II games.

If you did have floppies, the first/best way to transfer disk images over is using a program called ADTPro. It runs on all modern OSes (under Java) and allows you to transfer via serial cable or ethernet (or audio on earlier Apple IIs with a cassette jack.Wink If you need cables, the ADTPro page lists some.

Also, if you need floppies, check out http://retrofloppy.com. He's a good dude and regularly supplies Apple II floppies.

For a hard drive, you'd need a SCSI card, which aren't too hard to find, but then you also need an old-school SCSI drive.
A much better option is to use one of the modern, solid-state storage solutions. I'm enamored with the CFFA3000. What's really awesome about it, is that it emulates hard drives, AND 3.5"/5.25" floppy drives. You can just download disk/HD images from the internet and copy them to your CF card or USB thumbstick and put it in the CFFA3000 and you will be quite happy!

Another solid-state option is the Microdrive IDE Turbo, which I use with a CF card. I just recently got one and am still playing around with it, so I can't compare it yet, but I think I may prefer the CFFA ever-so-slightly more. But the people that make the Microdrive are awesome and make a lot of very useful add-ons.

Speaking of, if it has no memory card, you will need one to run almost all Apple IIgs hardware. I'd recommend a minimum of 2megs, but most new cards are 4 or 8 megs because there's not any point in making a smaller version with the cost of those DRAM chips these days.




Here are some of the current hardware vendors I've ordered from, all very nice and dedicated folks:
Ultimate Micro (aka UltimateApple2)
A2Heaven
Nishida Radio


By the way, if you're wondering why an Apple IIgs would come so stripped down as yours and unable to run the cooler 16-bit games, one explanation is that it could've been one of many systems sold into schools to basically act as a replacement for the earlier 8-bit Apple II systems. So if you had a box of Apple IIe games, you'd probably have no problems running 100% of them as is.

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