Thread
Apple II gs the best Apple computer ever.
I heartily believe that Apple II gs is the best and most superior Apple computer ever. It is not only the coolest Apple computer but extremely fun, enjoyable and powerful, had Apple not destroyed it and moved to Macintosh I would have owned the latest Apple II line right now. I think Apple II gs would have kicked Macintosh on the butt easily, I believe if Apple kept the line of Apple II as we speak with more advanced and powerful Apple II line like the GS we would have the iMac and mini Mac, etc all those would be replaced with iApple, mini Apple, etc instead while still maintaining backward compatibility. * sigh *
Right now I am owner of an Apple II gs and I am spending some cash upgrading it, providing it with hard drive, etc. Does anyone here have any advice of how else I can inject further stereod and benefit of it for todays daily usage? Thanks in advance.
Right now I am owner of an Apple II gs and I am spending some cash upgrading it, providing it with hard drive, etc. Does anyone here have any advice of how else I can inject further stereod and benefit of it for todays daily usage? Thanks in advance.
Quite possibly. Just got one and it seems to be much better than the early Macs.
Sadly selling new computers that are backwards compatible with old ones has not been a good tactic for non-PCs, and definitely not at that period.
Sadly selling new computers that are backwards compatible with old ones has not been a good tactic for non-PCs, and definitely not at that period.
What do you like better about it?
I have only made very little use of the IIgs, but I find it a bit of a strange beast. I would like to play more though.
But remember, it wasn't released until late 1986, less than 6 months before the Mac II arrived. I'd need some convincing that a 2.8MHz 65816, 16bit machine is better than a 16MHz 68020 + 68881 Mac II.
Of course it was 4 or 5 times cheaper!
I have only made very little use of the IIgs, but I find it a bit of a strange beast. I would like to play more though.
But remember, it wasn't released until late 1986, less than 6 months before the Mac II arrived. I'd need some convincing that a 2.8MHz 65816, 16bit machine is better than a 16MHz 68020 + 68881 Mac II.
Of course it was 4 or 5 times cheaper!
I like my IIgs, it is the only Apple product I play games on. While I don't think it was as good as an Amiga, it was a decent system to play games on and had very good sound.
I am a proud owner of an Amiga 1200 @ 68060 using 64 Mb of RAM running on with 4 GB HD. 
Wish I had a IIgs...
@MacMan
It is a great toy the Apple II gs, MacMan. It really is.
It is a great toy the Apple II gs, MacMan. It really is.
Yes, it was cheaper.What do you like better about it?
But remember, it wasn't released until late 1986, less than 6 months before the Mac II arrived. I'd need some convincing that a 2.8MHz 65816, 16bit machine is better than a 16MHz 68020 + 68881 Mac II.
Of course it was 4 or 5 times cheaper!
It was also a colour machine and had decent sound capabilities, and with GSOS 6.0 (at least) appeared faster to me in real world application.
I used mine to write my honours thesis in 1987 (including statistic and graphing - which I wrote my own application to do), and continued with it in post graduate research.
Mine is now a hot rod with a transwarp card etc, etc - but i just don't get enough time to play with it these days.
It certainly would be interesting to see what would have happened if Apple could have used the lessons of today back then with respect to transitioning between platforms.
Apple have since moved from 68k to PPC, from NuBus to PCI, from serial and ADB to USB, from SCSI to Firewire and IDE and now from PPC to Intel with much less fuss than the move from 6502-like to 68K back then.
Regards,
Macdownunder.
I like the IIgs better than any 68000 based Mac. You can't compare it to an 020 or 030 model, though.
Photos of my IIgs setup for those interested:
http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/apple_IIgs/
It's a great machine.
blakespot
http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/apple_IIgs/
It's a great machine.
blakespot
That's pretty sweet... I've got 3 IIgs', but I haven't done much of anything with them.
Gyah! Why not? They're awesome.
If I could only find out how to make those damned .2mg files work on a real gs...
If I could only find out how to make those damned .2mg files work on a real gs...
They're byte-for-byte images of 3.5" diskettes with a (typically) 64 byte header tacked on to them. You'd need to get them written back to a physical floppy either by:
- 1) Sending the 2img file to the IIgs via a telecomms package, then using a program called Asimov (
2) Having a program like ADTPro that directly transmits to and writes the disk on the IIgs (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net)
That just makes me want one even more now!
You know chris, that's a pretty good question.
I really don't know. I've had them for almost 10 years. I've used my IIe quite a bit. I have a large box of software that hopefully works. I'm in the process of organizing my collection, so maybe after I finish with the Mac's I'll pull out the IIgs'.
I really don't know. I've had them for almost 10 years. I've used my IIe quite a bit. I have a large box of software that hopefully works. I'm in the process of organizing my collection, so maybe after I finish with the Mac's I'll pull out the IIgs'.
No chance of you shipping me one of the 3.5 floppy drives from one? I only have one and it drives me nu- *swap* *swap* *swap* *swap* *swap* *swap* *swap* *swap* ts.
HA! Couldn't tell you... I'm not even sure how many I have. I need to go through a few boxes of stuff. If I have 4 or less probably not. I have 3 IIgs', as well as 3 Pluses and a 512ke that the 800k drives work with, so I like to keep some around.
Nevermind, acquired one from somewhere else.
/me cries about how his IIgs Woz Edition's case is destroyed
Found it in the scrap pile at the dump. The motherboard and dented up power supply still work though.
Found it in the scrap pile at the dump. The motherboard and dented up power supply still work though.
My IIgs is actually a ROM 3 motherboard inside a pristine Woz case. Best of both worlds, as I see it.
blakespot
blakespot
/me has a horribly beaten up ROM 03 GS. It was a school computer and it has 'Foreign Language Dept.' melted into the front. It's actually not too bad other than that.
Glad you were able to procure a drive chris!
Out of curiosity, isn't ROM 1 better than ROM 3 for software compatibilities?
I had to go look through a few discussions on comp.sys.apple2 to get a definitive aswer to your question.
Of course the ROM 3 offers the advantage of larger amount of RAM, 1MB built in vs 256K, 256k ROM vs 128K ROM, ability to use the slots without losing the built in port i.e. put a card in slot 4 and still use the mouse in GS/OS, etc.
So it comes down to a matter of taste. I've got a ROM 1 GS but I've also got a ROM 3 motherboard that I'm considering putting into the case.
Cheers,
Dean
The ROM 1 is better if you want to be able to run ALL the programs that were released for the Apple IIGS. When they released the ROM 3 version there was some of the early GS stuff that wouldn't run on it because of "bugs" in the ROM that were fixed in the ROM 3.
Of course the ROM 3 offers the advantage of larger amount of RAM, 1MB built in vs 256K, 256k ROM vs 128K ROM, ability to use the slots without losing the built in port i.e. put a card in slot 4 and still use the mouse in GS/OS, etc.
So it comes down to a matter of taste. I've got a ROM 1 GS but I've also got a ROM 3 motherboard that I'm considering putting into the case.
Cheers,
Dean
magnusfalkirk thank you so much I am sticking with ROM 1 as I only need 1 MB of RAM + 256K build in to the motherboard to run ALL APPLE II AND GS games.
I am sticking with ROM 1 as I only need 1 MB of RAM + 256K build in to the motherboard to run ALL APPLE II AND GS games.
I have a an Apple IIgs with an Applied Ingenuity 20 Mb HD, a PC Transporter CArd, the SCSI Card and a GS RAM CArd with 2 meg.
I have an unidisk and an Apple 800k Drive as well.
I'm thinking of selling it on ebay, anyone have an idea how much it"S worth ?
I have an unidisk and an Apple 800k Drive as well.
I'm thinking of selling it on ebay, anyone have an idea how much it"S worth ?
Can they be written on a Mac instead? It's easy to download the files to an old Mac with a floppy drive. For writing images to 5.25 disks I have to use the most convoluted process involving booting off an 800K disk (made on the Mac) on the IIGS that has ProDOS and Asimov, then putting in another disk with the 140K images, then having Asimov write the images. Of course because of some $4B error you can't just put the disk images straight into the 800K disk on the Mac. First you have to put them into a Stuffit 1.5.1 file and boot GS SHRINKIT and have it expand them. Then Asimov will actually work with those disk images that were expanded.
Got to: http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/ and download the latest copy of ADTPro. With this program, and the right serial cables, you can connect your GS to your Mac and transfer the disk images to the GS which will write them to a 5.25 disk or 3.5 disk as part of the transfer program.
With ADTPro you can eliminate the hastle you seem to currently have trying to get your Apple II programs from the Mac backto the GS.
Just a thought,
Dean
@magnusfalkirk
Can Apple II gs read Macintosh diskette even the latest iMac or extract compressed Macintosh files?
Can Apple II gs read Macintosh diskette even the latest iMac or extract compressed Macintosh files?
The Mac that I use right now to write the 800K IIGS disks is a 7200. ADTPro server seems to run only on OS X. So I would have to set up a special Beige G3 which has serial ports and can run OS X, or buy a USB to serial.