Fun stuff. I had to let mine go years ago, hopefully I will pick one up again...
Anyway, it's a good machine; a fully-loaded IIGS (including a CPU accellerator) is the equivalent of a Mac LC (maybe an LC II?) or a 386sx/25. The LC (or LC II?) with an Apple IIe card was sold by Apple as the "Apple IIGS killer" when Jobs decided he wanted to shift the company to Macs instead of continuing the II lineage. Let's see what I can pick out of my memory... There were 3 editions of the IIGS, ROM00 (usually had Woz's signature on it), ROM01, and ROM3. Most ROM00 were upgraded to ROM01 - if that one isn't, find the upgrade because pretty much no software you can find will run (or run correctly) on a ROM0. I don't think the LC monitor will work. The IIGS digital output was different than the stock Mac and stock PC stuff... But there is an RCA jack on the back that does analog composite output, so if you had to you could hook the IIGS up to your TV or VCR video-in and see what's doin'. The IIGS has a startup "bonk" that tells you it got power, the second bonk was probably an error message stating that the system couldn't find a startup device. If there were no drives hooked up to the machine, that's 95% likely why you got 2 bonks so close to each other - when you have a drive with no startup media at cold-boot time you get one bonk, then a disk seek for a few seconds and then another bonk. When you get some startup video, do Ctrl-OpenApple-Escape (wow how did I remember that) and you will get into the ROM Control Panel and you can play with the machine's core settings. See if the clock is up to date, the battery likely needs replacing (it's a Casio "watch" battery IIRC). The drive port in the back will take an "old style" 800k "Mac" 3.5 floppy drive. My memory is hazy about connecting a SuperDrive. The IIGS was backwards-compatible with all other Apple II stuff, so if you can find a IIe or Franklin Ace computer from somewhere (Ebay?), you can pull out the 5.25" disk controller card and connected drives and use them in the IIGS. At least one 800k drive is mandatory IMO, the 5.25" is really optional unless you want to do IIe games or IIe educational programs. You will want to get some memory and a SCSI card after you get a floppy drive. The thrift store machine probably has 256k which is stock but insufficient to run the OS you will want. A SCSI card will let you attach any SCSI external drive - 21mb flopticals were popular in the IIGS heyday, but maybe you can find a ZIP disk or an equivalent. IIGS software is very small. The IIGS boots older Apple II DOS 3.3, ProDOS, or GS/OS - it will read/write HFS partitions up to nnnn mb but must boot on a ProDOS partition first which maxes out at 32mb. The IIGS runs cool, no fan needed. The "S" in GS is pretty cool, it's an on-board Ensoniq synthesizer CPU with 64k of dedicated RAM; you can get better music from it out-of-the-box than you can from any Classic Mac out-of-the-box. Depending on how much $ you want to sink into your thrift store find, which is probably dictated by what you want to do with it, I would recommend getting a 4mb static RAM disk and an accellerator and an 800k floppy drive. You could get the OS and your common apps on the RAM disk, the accellerator just makes GUI apps (GS/OS, AppleWorks, music software, etc) easier. Feel free to email me off-list if you want any more direct info (I've probably polluted the list enough with this non-Mac text), I was the Apple II head for years at my local user's group, I might be able to help you get it up and running if you want, maybe find/get you the latest OS (which is free) and some freeware titles if they become too much of a pain to download on the Mac. -----Original Message----- From: Vintage Macs [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bailey Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 9:31 PM To: Vintage Macs Subject: Iigs info? Saw a Iigs at the local thrift today, monitorless. When I turned it on, it made a sound not unlike an unhappy Mac sound -- actually two of them. I couldn't find a working fan in the puppy either. Sound like it might be worth rescuing? I have an ADB keyboard and an LC monitor I could hook up. Would I need System 6 on floppy? Anything else? Would the unhappy sound come from no OS disks, or is it possibly officially borked? How about fans... Shouldn't there be one of those? Woz's signature was neat, at any rate. Thanks! Ruffin Bailey -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Vintage Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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