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Apple Pascal with 5.25" Unidisk

S

Simmo1010

Member
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
14
Location
Wellington, New Zealand
I have an Apple II europlus with ...
- two Disk II drives attached to a disk II controller in slot 6
- a 5.25" unidisk attached to an Apple I/O controller in slot 4 (also tried slot 5)

The unidisk works fine under DOS 3.3, but I can't access it from Apple Pascal (I've tried 1.2 and 1.3). Is this normal? The Pascal 1.3 documentation mentions the 3.5" unidisk, but not the 5.25" drive.

I'm fairly new to the Apple II world, so sorry if the answer is obvious - some light Googling didn't throw up anything useful.

Thanks in advance.
 
Why are you trying to run Pascal in the Unidisk 5.25? Have you tried running it in the regular Disk II yet?
 
magnusfalkirk said:
Why are you trying to run Pascal in the Unidisk 5.25? Have you tried running it in the regular Disk II yet?
Click to expand...
Both Disk II drives work fine with Pascal. I added the Unidisk as a third drive to reduce the disk swapping.

I was hoping to leave Pascal disks #1 and #2 in the two Disk II drives and use the third disk for program storage.
 
magnusfalkirk said:
Why are you trying to run Pascal in the Unidisk 5.25? Have you tried running it in the regular Disk II yet?
Click to expand...
It's ovbvious the OP isn't familiar with Apple II stuff as stated in their first post of this thread and first post on these forums.. That is why.....

Great to see another K1W1 on the vcfed.org forums. Welcome mate:)
 
Last edited:
Caluser2000 said:
It's ovbvious the OP isn't familiar with Apple II stuff as stated in their first post of this thread and first post on these forums.. That is why.....

Great to see another K1W1 on the vcfed.org forums. Welcome mate:)
Click to expand...
Thanks. Been lurking for a few years (and picked up all sorts of useful info) - but this is my first thread, so still subject to moderation from the lovely admins :)
 
You are welcome. I'm up in Palmerston North. Last Thursday I popped down to Wellywood and picked up a nice mid 2000s ACER lappy in a TardMe $1 auction. It is going to make a nice Linux system when I max the ram out to 2gigs.
 
Looks like I have a failing I/O disk controller card. Apex II diagnostics will occasionally recognise it as a Disk II controller card, but usually comes back with "unknown card". Both proms give the right checksums, the only socketed logic chip checks out ok and it still reads and writes disks, just won't boot or work with Pascal. Drenching the sockets with contact cleaner hasn't helped, so I'm assuming it's a marginal boot prom, or bad socket - either way it has now been thrown on the "future projects" pile.
 
Some things just don't work with unusual configurations. Pretty much 5.25 disk drives need to be in Slot 6. Disk drives in any other slot are hit and miss with some software.
 
Slot 6 is the default configuration, and a lot of programs assume as much. What if you boot Pascal from the UniDisk in non-slot 6, then access the regular Disk ][ drive on slot 6?

The other, more expensive option, would be to get more UniDisk drives and daisy chain them. Then you can have a whole bunch of drives on slot 6.
 
Another option to try is swap the disk controllers around and boot the unidisk from slot 6. I don't think Pascal will recognize any more than two disks per controller like Prodos will. Which brings up the question of using Pascal 1.1: If you don't plan on using any larger media than the 5 1\4 floppies, I'm not sure versions 1.2 or 1.3 get you any benefit on a Europlus. Just few more things to try
 
resman said:
Another option to try is swap the disk controllers around and boot the unidisk from slot 6. I don't think Pascal will recognize any more than two disks per controller like Prodos will. Which brings up the question of using Pascal 1.1: If you don't plan on using any larger media than the 5 1\4 floppies, I'm not sure versions 1.2 or 1.3 get you any benefit on a Europlus. Just few more things to try
Click to expand...
Thanks resman (and olePidgeon) - trying to boot off the unidrive helped me work out I have a bad controller card. It won't boot with the Unidisk and controller in slot 6 (so the Disk II and Disk II controller out of the system) - just goes straight to basic. Same for Dos 3.3 and Pascal.
 
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