"new" beat to hell IIGS. Need advice to get it running.

[Celotine]

Got this on Mercari for suspiciously cheap. Well after being shipped with NO packing materials beyond a very beat and soft box and a thin layer of news paper, it works. I got check boot device, I assume that's bc I have no hard drive or boot disk. What are my hard drive options? Some type of disk emulator or something along those lines? I have only the main computer, a keyboard that also came poorly packed from another seller, and a mouse. 

Edited July 14 by Celotine

[magnusfalkirk]

I'd suggest either a CFFA3000 from here: https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/cffa-v1-0-rev-c-rm-for-ii-ii-iie-and-iigs/

or a FloppyEMU from here: https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Either one of those is an excellent option to get your GS up and running use disk images, which you can find all ove the Internet. Have you opened it up to see if there are any extra cards inside, such as more memory? Did the seller tell you whether it is a ROM1 or ROM3? A ROM1 GS came with only 256k of memory, a ROM3 has 1MB of memory.

 

Here's a list of keyboard combination shortcuts:

 

Apple IIGS Keyboard tricks:

 

Keys                                       function
----------------------------------------------------------------
Ctrl-OA-Reset                               Reboot
Ctrl-Shift-OA-Reset                       Reboot and re-load BRAM (ROM 03)
Ctrl-OA-OPT-Reset                        System test (OA-OPT to repeat)
Option while power-on                  Menu to Reset standards
Ctrl-OPT-Reset                              Reboot and give menu
Ctrl-OA-ESC                                 Go to control panel
Ctrl-OA-Shift-ESC                         More direct to control panel
Shift 5 times                                Enable sticky keys(ROM 03 or Sys 6)
Shift-OA-Clear                              Enable keyboard mouse (ROM 03 or Sys 6)
Ctrl-OA-Del                                  Clear keyboard type-ahead buffer
Hold OA, then Ctrl-Del                   Auto fire Button 0
Shift-Period on keypad                   Comma
Ctrl-OA-2 in GS/OS desktop app     Select "About.."
Control-6, then <key> in BASIC     Set cursor to <key>
Ctrl-OA-OPT-N  at sliding Apple       Credits
(i.e "Check Startup" screen)

 

 

On the bright side at least it does boot, considering the flimsy way it was packed. I hope all of this helps.

[Celotine]

2 hours ago, magnusfalkirk said:

I'd suggest either a CFFA3000 from here

Wow that's all a ton of help! I'm gonna look into a compact flash hard drive option as you and someone on reddit suggested. I did open it, only card is a RAM expansion card, and even that was nearly empty. And I think I saw ROM1 on the inside. Do I need to do anything with the power supply? I understand there are RIFAs.

[eightbit]

Check the battery!

[Celotine]

2 hours ago, eightbit said:

Check the battery!

Already done. Looks as good as the day it was installed, except for you know... Being totally dead.

[+remowilliams]

I second the CFFA3000/FloppyEMU recommendations, I have both and they are both excellent products.

 

For power supply - I'd suggest a recap (Console5 has kits, if you have the required skills) and ReActiveMicro has replacements available as well.

[Modnarmai]

I use the Micro Drive Turbo and a Floppyemu.

I am about to switch one of my machines to Ramfast and BlueSCSI.  The fastest HD solution.  The Ramfast is hard to find, currently MDT is the next fastest.  The Ultimate Drive is coming and should be a close second.

I recommend getting a modern ram card.

Cut the battery out and get a new option.

 

[Celotine]

1 hour ago, Modnarmai said:

 

I am about to switch one of my machines to Ramfast and BlueSCSI.

I didn't know blueSCSI works for this. That's a good inexpensive option. The compact flash hard drive replacement is expensive AF.

[Baldrick]

On 7/21/2024 at 4:55 PM, Celotine said:

I didn't know blueSCSI works for this. That's a good inexpensive option. The compact flash hard drive replacement is expensive AF.

The BlueSCSI might be inexpensive but the high speed SCSI card that you'll need to make it work is eye bleedingly expensive and hard to find.

 

The CFFA-3000 is cheap by comparison at $225 USD.

Another option is the MicroDrive/Turbo at $95 USD, but it is not a disk image handler, but more of a hard drive replacement that uses CF cards as the drive media.  Both the CFFA-3000 and MicroDrive/Turbo are available for sale at ReActive Micro.

MicroDrive works the best on a IIGS and if you use it along with an outboard disk image handler like the FloppyEmu from Big Mess O'Wires that is the ultimate high speed storage and disk image handling solution for a IIGS.

 

[Baldrick]

On 7/16/2024 at 12:52 PM, Celotine said:

Already done. Looks as good as the day it was installed, except for you know... Being totally dead.

Cut that battery out and install a 3V battery in a holder with lead wires away from the motherboard.

Those soldered-in batteries have a 100% leakage probability once they are dead.