[Apple3-L] Can an Apple III Boot off an Apple Profile HD?

[Jeff Marraccini]

Steve,

None of the mass storage devices I have worked with (CFFA compact  
flash adapter - my current mass storage choice for my ///'s <grin>,  
Corvus hard drives, and First Class Peripherals Sider hard drive)  
would boot the ///.  A boot floppy has to be used to bring up BOS or  
SOS.  Once booted, the applications run off the flash memory or hard  
drives, but booting still takes a minute or two off the floppy.

The bootstrap code on the /// is very small but from what I have been  
told it is highly dependent on the first floppy drive in the ///, so  
it would need to be redirected elsewhere or rewritten.

Thanks,

Jeff

___
Jeff Marraccini
Manager, Altair Systems
Altair Engineering, Inc.
http://www.altair.com/
jeff at altair.com
+1 (248) 614-2400 ext 294

"The Computer is your Friend." -- Paranoia
This email message is not a digital signature and its opinions are my  
own.


On Sep 30, 2007, at 1:29 PM, Steve wrote:

> Dave,
>
> Thank You for the reply. This is what I had come to figure was the
> case due to the lack of it being referenced anywhere. That would be a
> nice addition to note in the Apple III FAQ.
>
> I am not sure if you know the answer to this, but it does appear that
> the Apple II Profile controller card has a boot ROM and will boot
> directly off the Profile. I am guessing that the Apple II interface
> must have been made available after the Apple III Profile controller.
>
> Also, the Lisa boots directly from a Profile, correct?
>
> So, am I correct to conclude that the Profile was designed and made
> originally available for the Apple III and then was made available to
> Apple II customers, and finally Lisa customers?
>
> Here is another interesting question. Can other newer controllers
> allow an Apple III to boot directly from an HD (ie http://dreher.net/?
> s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php) ?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Steve
>
> On Sep 30, 2007, at 12:57 PM, Dave Ottalini wrote:
>
> >
> > The short answer is - NO. The longer answer is that with BOS3 (and
> > a couple of earlier programs), you would start with your .d1 drive
> > but it immediately goes to the Profile and loads everything from
> > there.
> >
> > The longer answer is that On 3 founder Bob Consorti's folks found a
> > way to do this, but it was not something they ever cared to share
> > because they didn't want to spend the time making it work on a
> > commercial basis... our loss.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Apple3-L mailing list
> Apple3-L at news.altair.com
> https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/apple3-l
>