On Mar 28, 7:26 am, demp...{at}actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:
> schmidtd  wrote:
> > On the back side of these home-built disks (see the hole-punch notch?)
> > it purports to hold a 60k ][-emulation program.  For the ///, this
> > might be enough memory to boot a later ProDOS...
> No. I don't have much direct experience with an Apple /// but everything
> I've ever seen about it says that the Apple ][ emulation mode has
> hardwired limits such as only having 48K of RAM, and there is no way to
> bypass this in software. The rest of the Apple /// RAM is simply
> unavailable.
That's my understanding after reading everything I can get my hands
on.  I know the machine was deliberately and hardware-ily hobbled, so
I wasn't expecting this "60k" thing as a real possibility.

> Besides, what is a "60K" Apple ][ supposed to be? A 48K
Apple ][ with a
> 12K language card? That wouldn't work with anything that is expecting a
> 16K language card with two 4K banks in D000-DFFF.
Well, exactly.

> It might be referring to 48K RAM + 12K ROM (which is the absolutely
> standard 48K Apple ][ emulation mode).
But then why is the disk flippy... he wrote something on the back
side, and presumably it's something different.  I'm not willing to
spend the money to find out, and if he's trying to make money selling
the disks, I don't guess he'd be interested in emailing a virtual
copy.

> If this was an officially supported product from Apple then I would have
> expected to have heard about it, and seen mention of it in later
> editions of ProDOS. Everything after ProDOS 1.0.x dropped support for
> the Apple ///, because ProDOS 1.1 and later require 64K RAM (48K main
> plus 16K language card).
I asked him specifically if it was a third party effort or a hack of
some kind - he indicated it was "official."  But then, an email
exchange with a home-made disk merchant is hardly authoritative. :-)
My interest in this thing was, as you guessed, the ability to run a
ProDOS that would give me all the room I have on the II.

Even so, SOS and all the hardware vagaries are looking like a fun
little challenge.  I got a "Hello, world!" interp running on the Sara
emulator the other evening... fun stuff.
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