falter
Veteran Member
I've had my Apple II+ for years now but never had the chance to fire it up as I did not have software or even a disk drive. Finally got a Disk II drive fairly cheap, and then discovered ADTPro, which rather ingeniously allows me to transfer disk images to the Apple from my PC via audio link to the Apple's cassette port.
I also recently won an ebay auction for a working IIe for $10 or so. It works wonderfully! Here's the two of them set up a different times last night:
Anyway, I initially tried ADTPro with the II+ -- partly because I figured it was first here, and also because it has this really wicked old joystick, which is directly socketed into the motherboard. I do have a IIe compatible joystick around.. but didn't want to hunt for it. Anyway for whatever reason, the initial bootstrapping transfer would not work. Without trying too hard, I switched to the IIe. Still didn't work, but I discovered I had the cable in the wrong cassette port. Still didn't work -- I checked the cable at both ends, adjusted volume.. and then finally it worked.
Eventually got the transfer program running and formatted a few disks. Now, when I was a kid we were all Commodore so I missed the whole Apple II scene. I was putting in double-sided double density floppies. The drive formats them ok -- however, when I set the client program to receive a disk, if it has say, 280 blocks to write, it'll write the first 100 or so just fine (it's always random) and then suddenly as we get further along it starts having trouble writing to disk. Eventually on the last 'groups' of blocks it mostly comes up bad.
Is there any way to pin down if this is the drive or the disks? Am I using the right type? I have a stockpile of old floppies. I did have a few with bad sectors come up when I was trying to get my IBM AT going. I'm wondering if I'm just having a bad run... but again, wondering also if I just have the wrong stuff here, or if the drive is hooped. Any ideas would be most appreciated! I must have Choplifter!!
I also recently won an ebay auction for a working IIe for $10 or so. It works wonderfully! Here's the two of them set up a different times last night:
Anyway, I initially tried ADTPro with the II+ -- partly because I figured it was first here, and also because it has this really wicked old joystick, which is directly socketed into the motherboard. I do have a IIe compatible joystick around.. but didn't want to hunt for it. Anyway for whatever reason, the initial bootstrapping transfer would not work. Without trying too hard, I switched to the IIe. Still didn't work, but I discovered I had the cable in the wrong cassette port. Still didn't work -- I checked the cable at both ends, adjusted volume.. and then finally it worked.
Eventually got the transfer program running and formatted a few disks. Now, when I was a kid we were all Commodore so I missed the whole Apple II scene. I was putting in double-sided double density floppies. The drive formats them ok -- however, when I set the client program to receive a disk, if it has say, 280 blocks to write, it'll write the first 100 or so just fine (it's always random) and then suddenly as we get further along it starts having trouble writing to disk. Eventually on the last 'groups' of blocks it mostly comes up bad.
Is there any way to pin down if this is the drive or the disks? Am I using the right type? I have a stockpile of old floppies. I did have a few with bad sectors come up when I was trying to get my IBM AT going. I'm wondering if I'm just having a bad run... but again, wondering also if I just have the wrong stuff here, or if the drive is hooped. Any ideas would be most appreciated! I must have Choplifter!!
