In article , Richard Kilpatrick wrote: > On 17/7/04 11:17 pm, in article > 40f9a591$0$36214$39cecf19@news.twtelecom.net, "Bryan Parkoff" > wrote: > >> Bill Gerber, >> >> I do not care that 13 sector controller card is broken, but I am sure >> that 13 sector PROM is in good condition. > > Bryan, > > S'Garber. Not Gerber. Not that I made the same mistake, but I made it once, > you know ;) > > Until I've chased down the fault, I want to hang onto my 13-sector card. I > can't remember if DOS 3.2.1 is 13 or 16 sector, my past experiences with > Apple ][s have always been 16 sector, even for the ancient ones, since I'd > use the same bunch of cards and drives (and software). DOS 3.1, 3.2 and 3.2.1 were all 13-sector. 16-sector Apple DOS disks were introduced with DOS 3.3 (actually it came earlier with Apple Pascal, but that's another story....) > The drive is doing the proper chipmunk noise, then 'seeking' - a slower head > movement with no clattering, but it's not seeking far - before kicking out > into the Monitor. I now can't remember if this is 16 sector in a 13 sector > drive behaviour, but my ][ plus was such a timewarp (original, unfaded or > peeling tapes, packing list etc) that I very much doubt it had much use or > upgrading. The P5 and P6 end in 0010 and 0009, so according to the FAQ, I > have 13 sector Disk ][ card. The proper behaviour of an Apple II trying to boot a disk where the boot PROM is unable to find the boot sector is that the disk spins endlessly. If you end up in the monitor, the boot PROM thinks it has read something and jumps to that code but it's garbage. > Bill, a 16 sector card and a copy of DOS 3.3 would be great, especially if > you can give me a price for a //c (I'm still searching for a UK one, but I'd > like to know what you'd charge. Did you see the $50 IIc on eBay? Their > shipping is horrendous, but the price dropped to $25 and still no bids (they > wanted $20 to send USPS (plus shipping) plus $20 for PayPal to unconfirmed > address or something... > > Richard (thanks for the heads up on the language card, too. You must > pre-empt my eBay searches). If you manage to get PROM's for a 16-sector disk controller card (either by themselves or with a disk controller card), you can easily make a "dual" 13/16 disk controller card in this way: The state machine PROM should be the 16-sector variety - it can handle both 13-sector and 16-sector disks. But the boot PROM's need to be different for 13-sector and 16-sector disks. So I did like this on my own disk controller card (I originally had a 13-srctor card and then I got the 16-sector PROM's with Apple Pascal): I piggybacked the 16-sector PROM on top of the 13-sector PROM and used a soldering iron to solder the pins of the top PROM to the corresponding pin on the bottom PROM, with one exception: the pin which should be connected to the +5 Volt power source. I bent that pin outwards on both PROM's so neither went into the IC socket. Then I connected them to wires which went to a switch, such that the switch gave +5 Volts to one of the PROM's -- this enabled me to easily switch between the 13-sector and the 16-sector boot PROM. It worked without any problem. Note that the boot PROM is needed only when booting a disk and then only at the very first stage, when reading the boot sector off the disk. Except for that it's rarely used (some of the Apple OS'es, such as Apple Pascal and Apple CP/M, reads the card PROM's in all the slots at later stages in the boot process to determine which cards are present and in which slots. Apple DOS doesn't do that). -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/ http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/