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Looking for some guidance on picking up a IIgs

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wdatkinson

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2007
Messages
54
Location
Noblesville, IN
I've been thinking for a while now that I'd like to obtain a decent IIgs system. The Apple II series was popular when I was in middle school. At that time, I was chugging away on my TI99/4a or my Commodore 64. As a result I'm not versed in the various options I'm finding online.

For instance, I see references to ROM 01, 02 and 03. What is the difference? Should I look for one ROM over another?

I'm likely going to find a machine with both a 3.5" and a 5.25" drive. As I understand it, the IIgs is backwards compatible with the rest of the Apple II family. Don't really care too much about a printer, but definitely would like to find an original monitor to complete the set.

What is a good baseline for the amount of RAM? I'm just going to play around with it, maybe play some games, DOS 3.3, ProDOS, etc.

Is there anything else I need to consider?

Thanks for any guidance!
 
Oh, it's been a while since I had mine, but here's what I recall.

ROM revisions are mostly important from a compatibility perspective; like 68k Macs, the IIgs has a whole lot of code in firmware even when the OS proper isn't loaded. As I recall, most software is compatible with ROM 01 IIgses; I don't recall having had any trouble with mine. It's the few ROM 00 machines out there you want to avoid. I don't know if later revisions cause compatibility issues with some software, but I don't think so.

I can't recall if there was a SuperDrive (1.44MB) 3.5" drive for the IIgs - I think there was. If you can find one for a modest price, it'd be worth picking up, as GS/OS can read standard PC floppies, which will make getting software on there much easier. I can't recall if it can read PC-format 5.25" disks or not. Otherwise you'll have to use an Old World Mac to load software onto HFS-format DD floppies, or get a serial port adapter.

Mine had 512KB of RAM; that was plenty for everything except GS/OS, where it was basically adequate once all the unnecessary extensions were pared down. If you have no plans to use GS/OS whatsoever, 256KB should be adequate for just about everything else, but I'd strongly recommend having it; it's extremely useful for transfer and organization. Of course, you'll also basically need a hard drive (or a CF adapter) in that case, so it depends how much you want to put into this. Apple has the GS/OS disk images available for download, and an Old World Mac can write them to 3.5" DD floppies with no trouble. The hardest part after that is bootstrapping ShrinkIt onto the system to unzip all those *.SHK archives IIgs software comes in; you'll want to get in touch with another IIgs user for that.
 
The appropriate monitor is really nice to have for the IIgs, the picture quality is not near as good on composite monitors as it was on the RGB IIgs monitor. Adapters can be made for either MultiSync monitors or (I think) certain Atari (or was it Commodore...) monitors.

The SuperDrive was available, but I'm fairly certain not without it's appropriate adapter card. Natively the IIgs is capable of daisy-chaining up to 4 drives including 2 800k 3.5 drives and 2 5.25 drives. Duodrives may be used at the end of the chain in place of 1 or 2 single 5.25 drive(s), and 3.5 drives must come first in the chain. SCSI is a good, but typically pricey option if you want to stay original, and would allow you to use a 20SC hard drive for storage if you're looking to keep things original, and I believe that there was even an external SCSI CD-ROM drive that was supported somehow by GS/OS...

Both of my systems are Rom03's, and I have yet to run into any incompatibility issue with older software, but I surely haven't tried nearly everything out there. Memory expansion cards can usually be found on the cheap for the original 1mb version, 4mb and 8mb cards go up in price to varying degrees...

CF adapter cards make these systems really nice to play with, I've got a MicroDrive Turbo in my main IIgs and it boots to GS/OS in seconds. something like a 256mb flash card provides all the storage space you should ever need, and then some.
 
ROM 03 IIGS's have the most on-board RAM, as I recall, though they also have huge problems with battery leakage. Be sure to get an image from around the battery area on the motherboard before you buy one.
 
Not to intrude, but just to let you know, I have 9 IIgs machines. 3 monitors, keyboards, both 3.5 and 5.25 drives. I think they all have memory expansion. These are mostly taking up space, so I'd let all but one of them go. I think there are 2 of the "rare":p Wozniak signed ones. I think I have mice too. Not sure where you are located, but if near you could pick up.
Kipp
 
The two ROM revisions have different motherboards - the ROM 1 machines have less onboard RAM, and less of the GS/OS toolkit in ROM. Thus, for GS/OS, you really want a ROM 3 machine. The ROM 1 machine has 256K onboard, and ROM 3 has 1152K onboard. All the "Woz" signed machines were ROM 1, but there's nothing stopping you from swapping that cover onto a ROM 3.

For RAM expansion, try to get the Apple 1meg card - it's dirt common, and usually not fully populated, but the chips to upgrade it are easy to get. For *most* things, you're not likely to need more than the 2.125MB or RAM this total setup will provide, and it's really cheap and easy. 4meg RAM cards are out there, but cost more and you're not likely to need it.

GS/OS runs great from a hard disk, so try to get a SCSI controller - although admittedly, they can be hard to find. You can also run from two 800k floppy drives, and it works OK. You can use some of your spacious RAM as a RAMdisk to store things temporarily.

I'd say get a ROM3 IIgs with the Apple RGB monitor, 1 meg RAM card, two 3.5" floppy drives and a 5 1/4" drive for compatibility with old software. This setup should be real easy to get, since all this hardware is so common. Remember when connecting the drives, plug the 3.5" drives in to the computer, and chain the 5 1/4" drives last.

A SuperDisk (HD 1.44mb floppy) drive is very rare for a IIgs. While you can make the drive easily enough by swapping the mechanism in a normal 800k drive with one from a junk Mac, You need a special (rare) controller to drive it. Don't count on finding one.

-Ian
 
Forgot to mention - if you're looking to use the IIgs primarily in backward compatibility mode for DOS 3.3, you might want another 5 1/4" drive. DOS 3.3 doesn't support 3.5" floppies natively. ProDOS does, however.

For any of the ProDOS and DOS 3.3 apps, you don't need any extra RAM. The built in 256K on the ROM 1 is more than enough. Remember, ProDOS 8 and DOS 3.3 were meant for the IIe which tops out at 128k.

The IIgs is fully backward compatible and runs all the old software great. It provides all the built in peripherals that the IIe needs boards for (floppy disk, serial ports, 80 column, extra RAM).

-Ian
 
Just about every ROM 01 I've seen has an Apple memory expansion card installed. Even unpopulated it adds 256k for a total of 512k, which is the minimum for most IIgs games. For GS/OS you need a fully populated card and a hard drive of some sort is highly recommended. You can get away with dual 3.5" drives, but be prepared for a lot of disk swapping. For the maximum amount of memory with lowest cost, find a ROM 3 and add the Apple 1MB card. Mass storage solutions are all expensive now. the CFFA3000 is a great option (another run of cards is coming), but the price might be steep for some.
 
If mass storage is too expensive for you, you should be able to use some scratch floppies and image stuff back and forth from a PC with ADTPro pretty easily. The //gs (according to wikipedia, never had one!) has a serial port, so all you'll need is a cable and serial port on the PC side and you can copy stuff to the //gs and mess about with it.
 
All kinds of very cool stuff you can do with a IIgs, one of my favorite Apple II's. If I had an extra GS right now I would offer you a good deal on one. I buy, fix up, and sell a few a year, don't make much on them, but its fun working on them and passing them on to people who will enjoy them. I am also always hoping one I buy will have a TWGS for my GS, but as they say wish in one hand and $h1t in the other, see which one fills up first, lol

My IIgs
 
Keyspan makes awesome adapters. The twin Mac-ish serial port one was the first USB-serial adapter I had. It was a donation to get USB connectivity documented for ADTPro (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/connectionsserial.html#USB_cabling). You can see it in the picture connected to the lampshade Mac. Stay away from super-cheap ones you find with supposed Prolific chipsets in them. They will not work with Prolific's newer drivers that aim to stamp out the cloners. If the adapter isn't a brand name, or doesn't say what chipset it uses, stay away from it.
 
Do those Keyspan adapters work from the USB port on a PC as well? I suppose it would come down to driver availability, but that could be a nice option to keep in mind since modern machines are moving away from having serial ports on the motherboard by default...
 
I just stuck a quad port rs232 pci card in my system so I have 5 serial ports available, so no more swapping between coco (Drivewire),
Commodore (Modem emulator), Apple (ADTPro), and IBM (Modem Emulator).

I kept having issues with the usb adapters when using them with the cocos. (The power cycling kept messing with the adapter and required unplugging and replugging to get them to work again.)

This card is on clearance for 14.99 and works fine with Windows 7 X64.

http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Serial-Cards-Adapters/4-Port-PCI-Dual-Voltage-WHQL-Approved-Serial-Adapter-Card-with-Legacy-Port-Remap-Function~PCI4S650DV

The legacy port remap function doesn't work, as I originally got this card for a dos application.

Later,
dabone
 
I am a huge fan of these FTDI chipset adapters I lucked into in a trash pile at work, Windows XP and up (including Vista/7-64bit editions) all recognize them right out of the box, no extra drivers to hunt down (they auto-load from windows update drivers). They seem to be about the closest to a REAL serial port as you can come on a USB adapter, no odd compatibility issues found yet.

I just wish I could find more, but I have no idea what brand they were sold under, just got them in a disposal pile. Short silver cable with semi-translucent blue housing around DB9. Love the heck out of them, used them with ADT without ANY issues.

EDIT: They look like these, however I think these are crap Chinese clones, I cant endorse the ones in this link.
 
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