How to boot Apple II Desktop/Mousedesk off of a virtual drive?

#1 Sat, 8 Aug 2015 - 20:27

I am using A2CLOUD as a hard drive for my Apple //c, and I wonder how to boot Apple II Desktop (which I have on the virtual drive) up. When I type

-DESKTOP.SYSTEM

it just loads a little, then crashes.

Edit: Also, how can you run AppleWorks?

#2 Sun, 9 Aug 2015 - 05:07

The serial drive driver occupies some memory that the deskop clobbers. So that's why that approach won't work. You'd have to find/make real floppy disks to run either of those desktop programs (or AppleWorks, for that matter) from the IIc - or get one of the SmartPort devices that have been coming out lately.

#3 Sun, 9 Aug 2015 - 16:07

Aren't you thinking of VSDRIVE.LOW?

Edit: Also, is there any way to load MouseDesk from floppy, but then have virtual drives to launch programs from (through MouseDesk)?

#4 Sun, 9 Aug 2015 - 17:23

Also, could you give me a list of software that is VSDRIVE compatible? And I thought VSDRIVE loaded in in place of the floppy driver. (Which MouseDesk doesn't overwrite.)

#5 Sun, 9 Aug 2015 - 22:06

tanuki65 said:
Aren't you thinking of VSDRIVE.LOW?

Edit: Also, is there any way to load MouseDesk from floppy, but then have virtual drives to launch programs from (through MouseDesk)?

If you can load MouseDesk from floppy (which I don't know, I've never used it) then the version of VSDRIVE that overwrites the floppy driver ought to work (which is what I think A2CLOUD uses).

tanuki65 said:
Also, could you give me a list of software that is VSDRIVE compatible? And I thought VSDRIVE loaded in in place of the floppy driver. (Which MouseDesk doesn't overwrite.)

I don't have a list... if you're overwriting the floppy driver, then any ProDOS software ought to work. You'd have to ask Ivan specific questions about how A2CLOUD behaves and what to expect; I'm honestly not an expert there. I only supply the driver.

#6 Sun, 9 Aug 2015 - 23:22

I am going to try GEOS.