Apple ][ (clone) disk booting

[Jules Richardson]

Dave Dunfield wrote:
>> What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just taking 
>
> Powering it on should be enough to boot it. The apple launches the ROM on the disk
> controller as part of it's initialization and that ROM tries to boot. If it's
> booting at all, you should observe the disk head step all the way out, then back
> in a bit as it reads the OS. If it just stays on the outside track, it's probably
> not getting very far.

Hmm, I don't see the heads move (other than stepping to the outside track at 
power-on if I've manually moved them) - no luck with PR#6 either (same 
behaviour; starts the spindle motor, then briefly rattles the heads against 
the end - outer - stop before just sitting there with the motor turning).

I'm going to take the machine in to the museum tomorrow though and try 
combinations of different drives / media, as there's no way I can test here 
that what I have is working.

> (Most AppleII drives seek very smoothly, with a "swoosh" sound).

This one's something of an unknown - it's a half-height drive in a case best 
described as "borderline homebrew" (i.e. it's quite well done for something 
done in a home workshop, but not quite as good as something I'd expect from a 
professional product). No identifying marks as to who made it, but the drive 
inside is made by ALPS - it's got a band-driven stepper motor for the heads 
rather than the spiral groove that I seem to remember the disk ][ units having.

I'll dig out a genuine disk ][ drive tomorrow and see if that makes any 
difference.

(The DOS disk I have is 3.2 incidentally... the wikipedia article on the A2 
suggests there was a tweak available for genuine Disk ][ interface cards 
post-3.2 to allow more sectors per track; I presume that  such 'tweaked' cards 
will still boot 3.2 and earlier media though? I've got no idea which 'type' of 
  interface this clone copies)

> The convention is to place the disk controller in slot-6, so the normal
> way to reboot an AppleII is "PR#6"

PR#5 seems to activate the drive on this system too - weird. Hmm... if the 
number following PR# is the slot, then I'll try this drive / disk combination 
with a real Disk ][ interface card plugged into the Mitac's expansion 
backplane (I've got a pile of Apple cards, I've just never had a genuine A2!).

Thanks for the info anyway - will see what I can find out tomorrow.

J.