Apple //e: emulation and "real" usage

nephros

I have an old Apple //e standing around and plan to play with it a bit.

I have two questions:

1) As I figure I'd better get familiar with the OS(es), it'd be better if I wet my feet with an emulator.
Which apple// emulators are good, and is one in portage?

2) Any hints as to how get the real one working?

2a)I have 5 1/4" floppies and a (PC) drive, can I just dd floppy images over to the floppies in my PC and they will work in the apple drives?
2b) I understand the video out port on the apple is "composite video", so it will work with either my VCR, TV-in on the graphics card or my old Philips CM8833 Amiga monitor, correct?
2c) Which were good apps/games for that machine? I plan to play the zork series, the originals by Roberta Williams, and Utima I and II.
As for real apps, which ones are a _must_ for an Apple][ system?

Thanks.

PS: [Edit] Well, this is not very gentoo-related, except for the portage question, so feel free to move to OTW. Sorry for this.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 6:45 pm Post subject:

nephros,

Have a poke around here

ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/

Regards,

NeddySeagoon
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

nephros · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 8:23 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 8:58 pm Post subject:

nephros,

I have run a Windows Apple //e emulator under WINE on RedHat with nothing better that a K6-2 450MHz and it could still run faster than real time. It was fine for Panic and Lode Runner

If you want to know which emulator it was, I'll need to dig about a bit.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

nephros · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 9:05 pm Post subject:

I found out that, sadly, floppies cannot be read or written from a PC-compatible 5 1/4" drive because of different technology.
(I suppose it's the same thing why you can't do this with Amiga floppies: PC floppies spin at constant speed, Amiga floppies spin faster when the head goes towards the rim.)

Look like I will have to follow the yellow-brick (i.e.null-modem) road. Off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of PRO-DOS .

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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 9:20 pm Post subject:

nephros,

Doesn't the Azimov site have PRO-DOS?

It has the ROMS that all the emulators need.
You can legally download and use things from there provided you have a legal copy. It save all that messing about with null modems.

Have fun!

NeddySeagoon
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

nephros · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 9:48 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2003 5:05 pm Post subject:

nephros,

It was the first personal computer I had. In fact, I went into Dixions and paid £10 forthe hardware manual for the Apple ][+, then just build one from the info it contained. I never got round to putting it in a box.

I asked a rep for some free samples of 16k DRAMS but he didn't have any - he gave me 64k ones instead.

Over the years, I upgraded it to a //e, which wasn't so easy as the info on the custom ICs wasn't published. It never did the double hi-res graphics properly.

I still have my home made Apple, which I was unising until 1995 when I got a cast off 286 and I've collected a couple of other real ][+'s along the way.

It is tempting to blow the dust off every now and then but I just play with the emulators instead.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

nephros · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2003 5:27 pm Post subject:

That's pretty impressive.

Can't say I ever thought of building a computer from scatch

!

I found mine on the street (it's true!) right by the trashcans.
I didn't know what it was at that time, but I brought it home, plugged it in, and it went *beep* and I thought "Cool! Still working". The monitor is broken though, so I put it in the closet and forgot about it.
When I moved recently I dug it out and put it beside my other computer corpses and thought "All right, let's go search the web in order to reanimate the thing."

I must declare the project dead however as I don't have _any_ software, so even the null-modem road is a dead-end.

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SamBuca · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2003 Posts: 27

I have a perfect working Apple IIge sitting at my parents house. I'd be great if I could extract the data from those 5 1/4" floppies to use with an emulator.

Nutcracker music, Math Blaster, some weird on/off game, all my old text documents from when I was a kid....

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 2:04 pm Post subject:

SamBuca,

You will find a lot of the old 8 bit Apple software on the web (look further up the thread for the address). You can get at your data and the programs in two ways.

1.) If your Apple has a serial port you can connect it to a PC serial port with a null modem cable. You only need three wires because it won't go fast enogh to embarrass a PC. Use something like Kermit at each end. (Yes it was named after the Frog).

2). The Apple has a cassette tape output for storing data (anything really) to cassette tape. It. converts a serial data stream into two tones. You could connect this to a PC sound card and record the data as a *.wav file. The trickey bit is recovering the data. You need to write some software to turn the tones back into data.

Now the Apple has a routine to do just that in the ROM, so that would be a strating point.
If you got really lucky, you could run that software on your PC emulator and 'play' data from the real Apple to the emulated Apple. Unfortunately, the cassette I/O routines need to run in real time. Traditionally, emulators are not vey good at that. Still, you may be able to turn the ROM routines into something that will run on a PC. Agian, it has to be run in real time, so you wouldn't want a multi tasking operating system in the way.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.