dreher.net

Back in the heyday of he Apple II, I had a Franklin Ace 1000 system. I've regretted getting rid of it & am considering purchasing either another Franklin Ace 1000 or an Apple II/IIe from eBay.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the Franklin for nostalgic reasons (I worked at Franklin as a college co-op student). But I have worries, too, about the reliability of aged 5.25" floppies.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has tried out this board on a Franklin Ace 1000 system yet? Back when I had my first Ace, I never remember having any hardware compatibility problems with third party hardware such as I/O boards, modems, RT clocks or "sound" cards (makes me chuckle to compare the Mockingboard to today's sound cards), so that bodes well. But it seems like this card in particular might be looking for certain things in the ROMs that might just not be the same between the Frankin and Apple ROMs.

Like I said, the Franklin would be my first preference, but now that I know that the CFFA is out there, it might make me swing towards shopping for a IIe instead.

Of course, another big question for me is if ProDos will work on the Ace or not. I've only ever used it with FDOS (Franklin's DOS) and DOS3.3.

First-hand experience or opinions are welcomed![code][/code]

Hi rmbracalente,

I don't have any experience with the Franklin, but I understand that it was
nearly a direct copy of the Apple II+, so I would bet that it would work fine.
Of course using ProDOS on a II+ is pretty limiting. Most software vendors writing apps to run on ProDOS assumed you had 128K of memory and that you were using a IIe or later.

On a II+ with 64K you can run up to version 1.9 ProDOS. The only possible way to get DOS 3.3 running from my CFFA card is to use DOS.MASTER from the late Glen Bredon. It is very cool, but you will need another computer to get it set up. Vince Briel of Replica 1 fame has done this and so have I.
But remember that you will still not be able to load your copy protect games onto the CFFA because they are, well, copy protected. With single 32MB card you can have hundres of 140K DOS 3.3 volumes. It is very cool. Although I did find it hard to setup DOS.MASTER, mainly due to a ambiguous spot in the instructions.

Thanks, Rich, this is the type of information I needed. Let me do some research on the procedures you suggested before I decide if I think I'll be able to get this solution to work on the Franklin. I might have a line on a iie platinum on ebay, which might change the landscape a little bit.

Makes sense about the games. Since this is one of the primary reasons I'm picking up the system, I'll have to look & see how many may be copy protected. I don't think many of the ones I have right now are (mainly SSI strategy games), but some I pick up at flea markets, etc., might be.

Do you think it would be possible to copy protected games onto the CFFA for archival purposes in conjunction with one of the copy-protection boards like the WildCard?

Not sure. Remember that the CFFA is a standard Block device under ProDOS, so if WildCard can write to any other normal ProDOS drive, then it can write to the CFFA card too, I would think.