Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!cs4w+ From: cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles William Swiger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Is there life after II+? Message-ID: Date: 28 Mar 90 22:16:25 GMT References: <13304@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 87 In-Reply-To: <13304@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> This is in reply to David Lee Matuszeks' article of 28-Mar-90 Please refer to it. Here's answers to most of your questions. (Not quite in order, sorry.) 1. Your composite monitor will work just fine with the //gs. However, you will probably want to get an RGB monitor, because it looks much nicer, especially with native //gs stuff. (Don't buy Apples' monitor, it's somewhat overpriced. Get a Magnavox monitor, or something like that.) 3. I think the SCSI card will work. Why don't you bring your hard drive in to one of the Apple dealers you mentioned and have them try it out for you? Or ask someone at Apple, they should know. Even if the Apple SCSI card won't work, there should be some kind of card that will allow you to connect the HD20 to a //gs. It just might not be as fast. 4. Yes, you certainly still can use the old Disk ][ controller cards with the //gs. Plug 'em into slot 6 & change the control panel setting for slot 6 to "Your Card." The daisy-chainable Apple 3.5 and/or Unidisk 3.5 drives can be connected directly into the Smart Port (which is the disk drive port) on the back of the //gs. 2 & 5. With GS/OS 5.0.2, the desktop stays in memory (Note that you will need to get at least one meg of memory for the //gs, more would be better.) so you can run old 8-bit programs and return to the desktop quickly, without having to reboot, >IF< the program exits cleanly. What I mean by that is the program had better not be highly copy protected or do strange things with the reset and interrupt vectors. If the program does, well, you'll have to reboot. Note that you can always copy unprotected disks from the 5.25" drive onto the hard drive, but you will also be converting the disk from DOS 3.3 to GS/OS, which can cause problems for some software. Copy //+ is an excellent program for copying disks and for deprotecting them. It's much, much better than Nibbles Away. However, taking a copy-protected program that uses a customized DOS and removing all of the protection, and then converting the program so that it will deal with GS/OS is not an easy matter. It's an entirely different problem than simply making a physical copy of the 5.25" disk. What you have to do is first convert the disk to a normal track/sector scheme, removing any copy-protection associated with a strange disk format and modifying the program to handle the normal format. Then you have to modify the program some more, so that it can be run as one or more binary executable file(s) (ie. BRUN programname) from DOS 3.3, which can vary from difficult to almost impossible. Then finally can you copy this file from the DOS 3.3 format onto your hard drive (thus converting it to GS/OS). This qualifies as hard-core hacking, and for most people is probably not worth the requisite time and effort. If you know 6502/65c816 assembly language and the detailed workings of DOS 3.3 / ProDOS / GS/OS (or are willing to spend a great deal of time learning), send me mail and I can offer you further advice. Unfortunately, the games developed for the 8-bit Apples tend to be very highly copy-protected, so you will have a lot of programs that you would have to modify. (Apple games are at the leading edge of copy-protection techniques. No other computer system has quite the number of nastily protected programs.) The good news is that you can still run your programs of off the 5.25" drive you have now, without making any modifications. Besides which, you can do much better by buying //gs specific programs and working with them. Many are not copy-protected at all, and the others can usually be deprotected fairly easily. Also, //gs specific programs are definitely much nicer that their 8-bit cousins. They are worth getting. I would recommend buying a //gs (but I admit that I am prejudiced in favor of the Apple //. You just might wish to consider buying another computer system instead, depending on just how much you like your Apple. Oh my! I didn't say that! [as every comp.sys.apple2 reader flames me: >>SCORCH<< Sizzle. Whimper.] :-) -- Charles William Swiger cs4w+@andrew.cmu.edu PS: {flame on} I hate with considerable vehemence all copy-protection schemes. I loathe copy-protection "engineers." They make my life so very difficult . . . . {Rant-and-rave topic detected: flame aborted. ;-| } PPS: Sorry for a long post, ladies and gentlemen. Not enough sleep available at this wonderful haven known to the outside world as Carnegie Mellon University.