A memory map for a 128k Apple II along with related soft-switch, etc. information is available as FAQs resource file R032MMAP128.TXT. Transferring Applesoft programs on an Apple II to QBASIC, GW-BASIC, etc. on the PC is mainly a matter of moving a text copy of the program to the PC. (To make a text copy of an Apple II program, you LIST the program to a Text file. See Q&A 017 above.) On the PC, you bring the A2 program text into your BASIC editor.

Yes. The hard part is getting machines before the GS to recognize all of it. The Apple ][ and ][+ have a practical limit of about 64K, which is accomplished by the 16K language card in slot 0. [Some accelerators provided 128K, as well as some very old ram cards, but I don't have any real info on that.] The //e had the widest variety of memory expansion options.

Especially for beginners, a user group is an absolute golden of software, information, and bargain hardware. Several Apple II users groups continue to meet, especially in major cities and on university campi. If a local group listing is 'missing' from your phone book, check for a Mac users group-- a number of Apple II groups have merged with their Mac counterparts.

You can peruse the newsgroup FAQs Q&A Contents page. You can also check out the Apple II Major Sites page (Csa21MAIN3.txt). All Apple II's come with some version of BASIC installed in-ROM on the motherboard. The original Apple II's have Integer BASIC. Starting with the II+ model, all Apple II's have floating-point Applesoft BASIC in ROM. Owners of early Apple II's can load in Applesoft or plug in a card with Applesoft ROMs.

The most popular 8-bit Apple II emus are AppleWin and Apple Oasis, which run under PC Windows, and Apple-PC, which runs under PC DOS and includes support for Mockingboard sound. These programs can turn your PC into an enhanced Apple //e running at least as fast as the real thing using software from virtual disks (disk image files). There are also 8-bit Apple II emus for Macs (one, Catakig, emulates a II, II+, or IIe) and Amiga (Apple 2000).

o- Sellers of original and second-hand software (See ads on the comp.sys.apple2.marketplace newsgroup and sites, like KulaSoft, A2Central.com, and Shareware Solutions II.) Also check the Apple II FAQs Vendor listings: o- Regular posters to this newsgroup will often send diskettes with some utilities and games for the cost of diskettes and mailing. o- Apple II archives maintain large collections of software which you can download via PC and transfer to your Apple II.

A good start is a series of fantasy game articles published, mainly, in the August through November 1999 issues of GS WorldView and since added to from time to. These are now interlinked for easy perusal. The articles cover 1990's through early 2000's interactive fantasy competition releases, Infocom's Lost Treasures I and II, a 'missing Lost Treasure', plus some more recent Zork series releases. Coverage includes brief descriptions plus download links.

Yes. Over the years, many accelerators were produced for the varios models in the Apple II series. Most of these were slot-based cards such as the AE Transwarp 1-3, though the ZipChip (4 and 8 Mhz models) and RocketChip (5 and 10 Mhz models) were drop-in processor replacements. For the GS, the Transwarp GS and the Zip GS were the only options. No accelerator for any Apple II is available new anymore-- you'll have to look for one used.

A:This is easiest to determine with an Apple IIGS. Go to the text control panel by pressing the control, open apple, and escape keys at once, then select the RAM Disk option under the Control Panel option. Note the 'Largest Selectable' entry, and add 256K to that-- that's how much RAM is available to GS programs. (The GS reserves a minumum of 256K for programs, though pretty much only older Apple II software will run in that space).

How: By far, the easiest and quickest way is to access software sites on the net using a PC or Mac. Files can be moved to and from your Apple II via a NULL modem connection with the net computer. If you use a Mac, you may have the option of transferring the files via a ProDOS or HFS diskette or an HFS Zip disk. (For details on hardware, file transfers, downloading, and uploading, see the Telecom-1 and Telecom-2 Q&A.) Where: Today, most users upload software, info files, etc.

Having both The Golden Orchard CD and The TABBS CD, I can assure all Apple II and IIgs users that they both contain a wealth of Apple II/IIgs programs, graphics, music, information and a multitude of fantastic archives of great interest and value to any Apple II and IIgs user. Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange ( ) is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its User Group founding by releasing the following Apple II Related CD-Rom Books: See the Apple II CD-ROM Info resource file R014CDROMIN.

Interesting bit of info: about a year and 1/2 ago, i was touring Sculptured Software in Salt Lake City, UT. I had just finished talking to the Mortal Kombat team and was rounding a corner, passing some offices and i noticed a name on the door, "Peter Ward". I instantly thought, "NO WAY!". There was a guy in the office and i said, "Are you Peter Ward???!!" Him: <slight pause> "Wow. You are the ONLY person i've ever met that knew that.

Try Microwave by Jim Nitchals and Jay Zimmerman. Jim worked on sound drivers with Steve Hales (primarily for the Mac) under the company name Halestorm. The company and its technology was later sold to Thomas Dolby's Headspace.

Send an email describing your site to the Apple II FAQs maintainer at . Include "Apple" in the message title.

Yes. There is a way for some PCs to read Apple II DOS 3.3 and ProDOS 5.25" floppies which are not copy-protected. By "some PCs" I mean that the PC must have two floppy drives (only one has to be a 5.25" drive) and it must be running MS-DOS or Windows 95, 98, or ME. (It won't work with NT, 2000, and XP). You also need a program called "DISK2FDI". (For a link to the program, see Csa21MAIN4.txt.) DISK2FDI reads the Apple floppy and creates a disk image (.do) on the PC.

The original Apple was not much more than a board; only 200 were made. With only one expansion 'slot', you had to supply your own keyboard, monitor and case. It sold for $666.66, but now they are worth many thousand dollars apiece as a collector's item. The computers that started the Apple II line; the Apple ][ debuted in April 1977, and the ][+ in 1979.

Yes, most external serial modems should work great with an Apple II. Models such as the //c, IIc+ and IIGS have a serial port built in; the ][, ][+ and //e do not and will need to have one added. Apple ][, ][+ or //e with Apple's Super Serial Card and an external modem that's fast enough can connect at 9600 baud fine; 19200 may be iffy. (Past 19200 pretty much requires an accelerated Apple II).

SCSI is a protocol (method of transmitting data) that lets you hook up to 8 SCSI devices on a SCSI bus (SCSI devices connected together). There are Hard Drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, scanners, and more available as SCSI devices. To get SCSI on an Apple II, you need to buy and install a SCSI card. (//cs and IIc Pluss have no native SCSI cards, but Chinook (later bought out by Sequential) made a Smartport capable drive as your only choice for HDs).

Yes, a pretty good commercial variant exists, but only for the GS: Procyon's GNO/ME. Since the GS (nor any other A2 model) doesn't have any form of memory protection or virtual memory, and the 65816 is limited to a maximum of 64K of stack space, programs that assume they can use whatever amounts of ram they want (gcc, X Windows, etc) can't be run at all. New info as of 8/16/97: GNO/ME v2.0.4 has been reclassified by Procyon to be freely copyable; it is now available for download from ftp://ftp.

If you have a GS without an accelerator card, use the builtin control panel (accessible by hitting control-open apple-escape at once or holding down the 'option' key on poweron) to change the system system between 'Normal' (1Mhz, same as a stock ][, ][+, //e, or //c) and 'Fast' (2.5Mhz). With accelerators installed in the GS, the 'Normal' speed still means 1Mhz, but 'Fast' is whatever the card is set to run at.

This is a new section and still undergoing a lot of updates. Feel free to suggest questions to answer here, etc The first thing to do is to make sure the hardware is running and functional. Even if you don't have any disks yet, you should be able to connect up the parts and turn the power switch on. The unit should beep on poweron, and start accessing a drive, if present. Most Apple IIs (except the GS, //c, IIc+) will attempt to boot from the drive forever.

There are a lot more questions with answers not included directly in this FAQ; please see http://apple2.info/wiki/index.php?title=CSA2_FAQ for more of them. The next section is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) posting of the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup. Copyright (c) 2007 by Tony Diaz (email: tdiaz-at-apple2-dot-org), all rights reserved.

Short answer: yes, any 80 (maybe even 40) column Apple II with a serial card (and almost always a modem) can connect to an Internet Service Provider that provides a shell account. (Please note that "connect to the internet" is the better term for it; avoid the media's popularizing of metaphors related to driving or surfing.) Longer answer: As of 3/8/97, the only available method is to have a serial (modem or null modem) connection to another computer which can translate and run stuff on it.

The GS most certainly can with the right software; certain packages like Publish-It (at least versions 3 and 4; maybe also earlier versions as well) for the //e or //c also have such functionality.

I have a such a program at home. It's called QSO Kid. It requires a IIgs, and from what little I've used it, it seems like a really good program. This is more likely to be an issue for ProDOS-8 programs. The main problem under ProDOS-8 is with programs that insist on referring to devices by unit number (or slot and drive). Network volumes do not have a unit number. Another issue is with filenames.

For the 128k Enhanced //e and //c series, the ones which come to mind are GEOS, Quark's Catalyst, and MouseDesk (aka Apple II Desktop). GEOS was probably the most popular of the three although it never reached the popularity it gained on the C64 platform. The downside with GEOS is that it isn't ProDOS compatible. So, you are stuck with only using the GEOS compatible programs (GeoPublish, GeoCalc, GeoWrite,....) Catalyst and MouseDesk are both very similar.

The most versatile and most common hard drive set-up is an internal SCSI interface card and an external SCSI drive. Hard drives, cd-rom drives, removable media (SyQuest, Iomega), flopticals, and scanners all can be added to the SCSI chain. Insert the card in a slot, connect a cable or two, and change a slot setting. The preferred SCSI card is the RamFAST Rev. D SCSI card. The next best card is the Apple Hi-Speed SCSI card.

Reading Apple II 5.25" floppies on a Mac requires the addition of special hardware. One company, Kennect, did make two drives that would handle this trick: the Drive 360 and the Drive 1200. They were primarily meant for reading 5.25" PC disks but were also advertised as having the ability to read Apple II DOS 3.3 and ProDOS floppies. Both required a device called the "Rapport", which plugged into the Mac's external floppy port and also gave the internal 3.

IBM PC keyboards are almost impossible to connect to any Apple II directly; the only possibility is to buy a device used to connect such a keyboard to a Macintosh, and try that with your GS. [The 'PC Transporter' addon card supports PC keyboards, but only in IBM PC mode; can't use them for Apple II programs.] IBM PC Serial Mice (usually have 9-pin serial connectors) can be connected to Apple //es with Sequential System's board.

For 400K or 800K Mac 3.5" drives, in general, no. Apple's 3.5" drive that was sold with Apple IIGSs has logic to sense which machine it is hooked up to (Apple II or Macintosh) and it works accordingly. Most 3rd party drives don't bother to put in Apple II support in their drives. Some may work if you hook them up to a UDC instead of an Apple 3.5" inch card. Old style Mac 800k drives are very slow. Mac 1.44MB (High Density) 3.5" drives can be used if you have both both the High Density 3.