I freed my parent’s attic of the old Franklin Ace 1000 I’d used from seventh grade through high school, hoping to get it going and play with some projects - in assembler - that seemed too difficult then. Now if only I could get it to boot into DOS…
I can’t tell whether the disk drives have gone bad - I have two - or if all the disks have demagnetized. The only disk that’s actually booted is an ancient A2-FS1 flight simulator, a Sopwith Camel done as lines. The one ProDOS disk I have comes up far enough to tell me that ProDOS can’t be loaded - Apple started checking ROMs to avoid supporting us Franklin owners. I remember that there’s a way to edit disks and add three no-ops, but as my disk editor isn’t running either, that’s not too helpful. Most disks produce the ‘error’ jamming noise, though some just spin. A few start to boot, and then crash to the monitor prompt.
The computer itself seems fine. If I hit the lovely red reset button, I get an AppleSoft prompt, and I can get into the monitor just fine. I just can’t save any programs to disk, which is kind of a nuisance for the explorations I was hoping to undertake. (I was hoping to get back to Ultima IV, too.)
I guess I can try some emulators, though I doubt Apple will consider my three Macintosh purchases (SE/840AV/iMac) sufficient expiation for my Franklin Ace 1000 and happily/legally let me use their ROM images. Given the situation of my disks, maybe I need to find an old Apple anyway, and its possession would make those issues go away.
I guess it was a good idea to print out listings of all the great games I wrote back in seventh grade!
Any thoughts on booting a recalcitrant Franklin Ace 1000?
Franklin, my dear Charlotte?
I'm sure that Apple's attitude toward support of old Franklin users is akin to Rhett Bultler's support of a Miss O'Hara. (I had a Franklin Ace 1200 with the upper and lower case letters that confused any Apple ][ software when I tried to use it.)
Two emulators are out there that are very worthwhile for Mac users.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gp/VirtualII/
Gerard Putter's Virtual ][ is up to version 2.6 and it has lots of geeky friendly things. Sound emulation for old Apple tape drives. The ability to "print" output sent to the printer to a text file on your Mac. And a servicable (but somewhat awkward) emulation of the Apple 2 disk drives as a folder on your Mac.
http://apple2.intergalactic.de/
Axel Bauer's OSXII has been up to version 0.8 since the start of the year and it works well. It is a more limited emulator, but it has a very nice user experience. It's disk "drawer" is initially a bit awkward for me to get accustomed to, but it makes a lot of sense once I figured out it's logic (especially for game playing). It's a bit of a resource hog compared to Virtual II but strictly for use of old Apple software, it's very slick and tweak-free.
For both of these emulators you'll need to get Apple ROMs. Rom images from an Apple II are easy to obtain online (look at emulation.net or the asimov Apple II archive for some starting points) but of course you need to actually have the hardware for these to be legal downloads.
Also take a look on ebay in the Vintage Apple Computer section for many frequent auctions of old Apple II era equipment. I picked up a Mac LC 3 with Apple //e expansion card and 5.25inch disk drive for a very cheap sum (under $50 for the whole lot). Haven't yet gotten it on the network with my other Macs, but it's nice to have a legal hardware driven IIe around again.
thanks for the pointers
I think I may still look around for an old Apple to see if what's on these disks is any good, maybe even a IIgs so I can transfer them to floppies I might be able to read on my old Quadra, but in general, emulators do seem a lot easier to find these days.
Bootable disks
Simon -- I have and can make DOS 3.3 bootable masters. I recently reconstituted an Apple II, several Apple II+'s, and an Apple IIGS. Feel free to email me at MdntTrain@aol.com.