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I finally got around to playing with my Apple IIs.

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seaken

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2016
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580
Location
Shokan, New York
I've had two Apple II's for a few years but I never got around to playing with them much (I tend to spend my time on old MS-DOS/PC stuff). But I had been reading some threads here from others who were setting up some Apple IIs and I decided to get them out and start learning more about them.

One is an Apple IIe Enhanced and the other is an Apple IIc. The IIc did not have a power adapter so I ordered one from a site mentioned in another thread (https://www.ebluejay.com/store/Apple2OnlineStore). I plugged it in and it powered up! But I had no software so I was only able to play around with the built in Basic.

The IIe came with a green phosphor mono monitor and dual disks drive, a super serial, and a mouse card. But the IIc didn not have a monitor. I tried plugging in a Macintoch Color Monitor but it didn't work. I pulled out a Magnavox composite monitor I had in storage and plugged in the IIc and it works. It is also in green phosphor but it also has a color mode. I am wondering now if I can get some color based games for the IIc to run on this monitor.

But first I had to figure out how to get some software onto 5.25" disks. I had used ADTPro a few years ago on the IIe and had created a boot disk for ADTPro. But I had forgot how I did it and had to do some reading and learn again how to use ADTPro. I struggled at first but I eventually figured out what cable to use and I got it working with the IIe (I had an old cable I had built and used on my Northstar Advantage to connect to my PC - it worked. I guess it was a null-modem cable.) I used the Apple IIe to make a couple of disks and I was able to also boot these on the IIc.

I had a lot of trouble figuring out the disks to use. I must have used about 20 disks and they all failed. And then I noticed that the ADTPro disk that was booting successfully had a center ring on it. The others I had been trying to use did not have this ring. I think I figured out that the Apple II 5.25" drives do not work with HD diskettes. They only work with DD diskettes, made for 360K on MS-DOS. I found a few diskettes that had this ring and tried them. They worked! But I only have a couple left, so I am going to have to try to buy some more DD 5.25" diskettes if I want to download some more software to use on these machines. For now I have made a couple of test disks, one is a Super Invaders game. It works!

Now I would like to make use of the mouse card in the IIe. Does it use the same serial mouse as I have on my PC's?

I also think there built in joystick ports. Are these going to work only with Apple joysticks?

This is my first experience with Apple IIs. There are some similarities with my PC's but I have a lot to learn. I will be watching some videos and reading to learn more. I already saw a cool drive emulator that may be a good thing for me instead of relying only on old floppies. (Although it has always been my practice in the PC world to stay with the drives that were being used at the time of the original equipment).

Seaken
 
seaken said:
Now I would like to make use of the mouse card in the IIe. Does it use the same serial mouse as I have on my PC's?

I also think there built in joystick ports. Are these going to work only with Apple joysticks?

This is my first experience with Apple IIs. There are some similarities with my PC's but I have a lot to learn. I will be watching some videos and reading to learn more. I already saw a cool drive emulator that may be a good thing for me instead of relying only on old floppies. (Although it has always been my practice in the PC world to stay with the drives that were being used at the time of the original equipment).

Seaken
Click to expand...

Im not an expert but Im answering because I know what it feels like to be the new guy here cause I am too. Youre all excited to share and these dudes have all been there and done that.

I think you need a mouse controller card and a apple made mouse. To use a PC mouse I think you need a work around.

There is a lot of info on youtube but you know that.

I have been reading everything I can on this website. (apple2history.org)
 
To use the Apple II Mouse card you have you do need a one button Apple Mouse. For the joystick port you'll need an Apple joystick, but I have several of them, so PM me and I can send you one. When it comes to 5.25 disks HD doesn't work. You can either use Double Density or Single Density. You can also use both sides of the disk, if you want to, by getting a hand held single hole punch and notching the side of the disk opposite the disk notch on the right. Make sure you make the notch on the left resemble the one on the right as closely as possible, other wise you can't write or read the back of the disk.

If you're thinking about getting the Floppy EMU from Big Mess O'Wires https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/ my answer is a resounding YES. I bought that and have it hooke up to my //c+ and it works like a charm. Now I can run the disk images that I download from the web without having to transfer them back to real disks. It will also run Hard Disk images, such as Total Replay, which has over 400 Apple II games.

Venger's comment about the apple 2 history website is a good one as that is a helpful resource.

I hope I've been able to answer some of your questions. If you have more continue to ask, someone will answer. The Apple II community is very helpful. In fact another place you might go to find help is:

comp.sys.apple2 - Google Groups

groups.google.com groups.google.com

It's an Apple II newsgroup that has been around for several years and there are a lot of helpful people there.

magnus
 
The most indispensable thing, I found, when getting back into Apple II stuff, is a phone or a cheapy standalone MP3 player that can be loaded full of .wav files of tape images... ones that can be simply played back over the cassette port. Getting bootstrapped in that regard was hilarious. :)

I have an absolute boatload of Apple II floppies in my garage right now, following a purchase I made from a guy up in Illinois. I'd say >90% of them are still perfectly readable, even after 30-35+ years. I wouldn't be surprised if there was close to a thousand floppies, each fairly well labelled/documented.. I also have (courtesy of the same guy) several boxes of NIB 5.25" DSDD floppies, if you're in need. Hit me up in PM.
 
JSR said:
The most indispensable thing, I found, when getting back into Apple II stuff, is a phone or a cheapy standalone MP3 player that can be loaded full of .wav files of tape images... ones that can be simply played back over the cassette port. Getting bootstrapped in that regard was hilarious. :)

I have an absolute boatload of Apple II floppies in my garage right now, following a purchase I made from a guy up in Illinois. I'd say >90% of them are still perfectly readable, even after 30-35+ years. I wouldn't be surprised if there was close to a thousand floppies, each fairly well labelled/documented.. I also have (courtesy of the same guy) several boxes of NIB 5.25" DSDD floppies, if you're in need. Hit me up in PM.
Click to expand...

Got a link to a how to? This sounds interesting.
 
A link on how to "download" disks, or bootstrap through the Cassette Interface?
www.thegeekpub.com

How to Transfer Files to your Apple II, II+, or IIe

If you’re new to this whole 8-bit or retro-computing revival that is going on around us, or if you’ve just so happened upon your old Apple IIe (commonly stylized as Apple //e) while cleaning out your mother’s attic, then you might have found yourself in an interesting situation (that is assuming...
www.thegeekpub.com www.thegeekpub.com
Inside that link is a link to the Apple ][ Disk Server that serves up the actual files. That I have used and it works well.
This I haven't used, but it's a bunch of .wav files of Apple tapes, it seems: https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple II Documentation Project/Software/Cassettes/
I have used both my phone and computers as sources for playback and it all worked very well.
 
JSR said:
Bootstrapping from a cell phone/mp3 player using an audio cable:

Click to expand...
OMG! This is gonna be fun! Thanks!

You guys gotta know - I am a total noob. Other than playing games and a few DOS commands that I barely remember, that's all the working knowledge I have of these computers.

Im starting from ground zero. This helps A lot.
 
Venger said:
OMG! This is gonna be fun! Thanks!

You guys gotta know - I am a total noob. Other than playing games and a few DOS commands that I barely remember, that's all the working knowledge I have of these computers.

Im starting from ground zero. This helps A lot.
Click to expand...

No problem--glad to help!

It takes a little time to sorta dial-in the right volume level for the "cassette" audio, but once you find it, you'll know. "ERR" means you're close -- either a touch too loud or a touch too quiet. I've found it's best to start with the volume all the way up, and slowly dial it down until it works reliably.

One you get sort of a core population of floppies created, life becomes a lot easier.

It's been a lot of fun, dusting off my skills from when I was a kid, and adding modern knowledge to it over the past 3 or 4 months.. keep at it! :)
 
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@Venger , we'll learn together, ehh? Your posts are what inspired me to get these out of storage and try to get them working. One thing that has amazed me is that these Apples have only 64K or 128K. I am used to 640K being the bottom end of the scale.

Thanks you to everyone who has contributed to this post. The links are very helpful and I will be reading up. I did come accross some info that seems to suggest I can use a PS/2 mouse with an adapter. But I would rather have an actual Apple mouse. But I am still figuring out what software will actually use a mouse that I can run in 64K.

Thanks again,
Seaken
 
Memory is a funny thing. And I'm talking about my own memory in my brain. I had forgot what levels of RAM were common, and why, back in the early 80's. The first PC I bought on my own had 640K (Tandy 1400FD). But my father-in-law's 5150 PC had to be upgraded from about 64K I think.

I was initially surprised that these Apple II’s came with 64K for the //e and 128K for the //c. But then I realized that early PC’s also came with these small amounts of RAM. The Original IBM PC came with 16K at first and then 64K. My N* Advantage came with 64K. The C64 had 64K. The Tandy 1000 came with 128K. The original MAC came with 128K. It wasn’t until about 1987 that 640K became the norm. (That was about when I bought the Tandy 1440FD, in about 1988). 8-bit computers were limited to 64K. The 8088 was limited to 1MB but it was more common in the early years to have only 64K-128K. It wasn’t until the 80286 that RAM over 640K became more common.

Seaken
 
What I am interested in now is to find out what I can get running on these Apple IIs that would be similar to what I ran on my N* Advantage and my first PC. I ran business applications on those machines, word processors and databases. I had WordStar on the N* and PC File (a Dbase clone) and PFS First Choice on the Tandy PC.

I know the Apple II was one of the first to be used with a spreadsheet (VisiCalc). I'm assuming there were also word processors and database software available for the Apple II in the early to mid 1980s.

I have several old printers littered around my storage area. I knew I had an Apple printer and I pulled it out in hoopes that I could hook it up to the Apple //e or //c using a serial port. The printer is a SilentWriter. It does have a serial interface (ADB) but it was meant for the MACs, not the Apple II. I found out I could hook it up to the Apple II but it wouldn't be worth the effort since there was almost no software that supported it. Maybe some IIgs software would work but not the software ued on the Apple //e or //c.

So now I am looking at hooking up one of my old "Epson" compatible dot-matrix printers. It looks like I will have to purchase a parallel port card since none of my old dot-matrix printers have a serial port.

What I want to do is set up a word processor on the Apple //e and a printer that I can print letters and contracts to, just like I did with my N* Advanatge in CP/M.

I will keep looking around and reading. But if anyone has any suggestions for some business applications that I can download and write to 5.25" floppies for the Apple IIs I would appreciate the suggestions.

Seaken
 
JSR said:
Bootstrapping from a cell phone/mp3 player using an audio cable:

Click to expand...
It is cool to see the old style green on black. But as I get older my eyesight gets worse. I found this site extremely difficult to read. It would be nice if there was an alternate page design for us who are challenged with poor eyesight.

Seaken
 
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This picture shows my first attempt in setting up the //c. I did not understand that the monitor would not work just because it had the same connector. The monitor I have is for a MAC and does not work with the //c. I thought I would get better video if I could use the 15-pin video connector. But it was not to be.

The Apple //e came with the Apple II monitor using the composite video port.

IMG_20220822_122803043.jpg
 
I did have a composite monitor that would work with the //c. So now I have both Apple II's using the green on black off of composite. I was not able to connect the //c with my PC using ADTPro. But I used the ADTPro disk to test if it would read in the //c 5.25 drive. I had to clean the heads but then it read the ADTPro disk. I have the //e connected to the PC and can use ADTPro to make disks. Then I can take the disks and put them in the //c.

IMG_20220822_144810311.jpg

IMG_20220822_144855847.jpg
 
I was able to use ProDos to get a catalog of the ADTPro disk on both the //e and //c. I also was able to use ADTPro on the //e to create a disk of Super Invaders. I am running it successfully on the //c also.IMG_20220822_145314229.jpgIMG_20220823_215329242.jpg
 
Until I started reading on all the Apple II sites I did not realize that there was another "DOS" besides the DOS I used on my IBM compatibles. (I only used CP/M and MS-DOS/PC-DOS machines and had no experience with Apple). So now I have to be more specific when I say "DOS". I had always meant it to be MS-DOS (or PC-DOS or DR-DOS) but it could also mean the Apple DOS or ProDOS used by Apple users and fans. Especially among a general retro or vintage micro crowd such as VCF. I will ammend my habit.

Seaken
 
Why does the "Edit" button not show on some of my posts in this thread? Does the ability to edit expire after a certain amount of time?

I just noticed that I called the StyleWriter printer a SilentWriter. Went to edit it but can't get in to edit it.

Seaken
 
seaken said:
Until I started reading on all the Apple II sites I did not realize that there was another "DOS" besides the DOS I used on my IBM compatibles. (I only used CP/M and MS-DOS/PC-DOS machines and had no experience with Apple). So now I have to be more specific when I say "DOS". I had always meant it to be MS-DOS (or PC-DOS or DR-DOS) but it could also mean the Apple DOS or ProDOS used by Apple users and fans. Especially among a general retro or vintage micro crowd such as VCF. I will ammend my habit.

Seaken
Click to expand...

Same here.
 
seaken said:
Why does the "Edit" button not show on some of my posts in this thread? Does the ability to edit expire after a certain amount of time?

I just noticed that I called the StyleWriter printer a SilentWriter. Went to edit it but can't get in to edit it.

Seaken
Click to expand...

Yup
 
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