IIgs Quick Start

This short guide should be enough to get you started with the Apple IIgs. I assume you have some experience on other computers but you've never touched a IIgs before

Getting Started

Power on the IIgs and you see the sign-on screen: 

     Apple IIgs
     Copyright Apple Computer, Inc 1977-1989
     All rights reserved
     ROM Version 3

Now the IIgs looks for a bootable device. A bootable device is any peripheral connected to an intelligent controller card who's firmware contains a Boot-ROM. A hard disk (fixed disk) is a bootable device if it's controller has a Boot-ROM. All floppy disk controllers contain a Boot-ROM, so a floppy drive is bootable as long as it contains a bootable floppy disk. A bootable floppy is one who's first track contains executable bootstrap code for loading an OS. Finally, a network disk is bootable if the IIgs's network controller card contains a Boot-ROM and if the bootable network disk is currently 'online'. If you don't have a bootable device connected to IIgs then you may want to skip down a couple paragraphs to 'What if you don't have a bootable device?'

Depending on the settings of it's Control Panel (similar to the BIOS Setup program on a PC) your IIgs may try to boot from a specific device or it may scan automatically for a bootable device. If you need to configure this setting, follow these steps:

  1. Switch off the IIgs and wait 10 seconds
  2. Press and hold the 'Option' key (aka 'Solid-Apple' key) of the IIgs keyboard
  3. While holding 'Option' key, switch IIgs back on. Keep holding 'Option' until you see menu with 'Press 1,2,3, or 4 to continue.' Press the '1' key to enter the Control Panel
  4. Use the cursor-arrow keys to move the hilight to the 'Slot's option and press the 'Return' key
  5. Use the cursor-arrow keys to hilight the last option, 'Startup'
  6. Use the cursor-arrow keys to set 'Startup' to 'Scan'
  7. Press 'Return' key
  8. Hilight 'Quit' and press 'Return' key

Now IIgs reboots and looks for a bootable device. If it finds one, you'll boot into the operating system present on the device. If the operating system is GS/OS then you'll land on the GS/OS desktop. From there you can get to AppleSoft by executing the ProDOS8 (I don't quite remember this part). If the operating system is ProDOS or DOS 3.3 then you'll likely end up at the old AppleSoft BASIC prompt ']'.

What if you don't have a bootable device? Then IIgs stops and requests user intervention with the informative message, 'Check statup device!'. Watch the cool sliding apple in the middle of the screen and see it flash (neato!) When you tire of this primitive but quaint animation, use the 'CTRL-Reset' key combo. The 'CTRL' key is lower left and the 'Reset' key is an isolated rectangle somewhere near the top of your keyboard (apple moved it on different keyboards.) Recognise the 'Reset' key by it's leftward-pointing triangle. When you press 'Reset' while holding 'CTRL' you force IIgs to bypass disk boot scanning and it drops you to the old AppleSoft BASIC prompt ']'

Now that you're here, let's start programming! Type this line exactly as it appears below. Don't worry if your characters are upper-case, IIgs is more forgiving than older Apples. The right bracket is printed by IIgs to indicate BASIC (as opposed to Monitor or other interpreter) 

print "Hello"

Press 'Return' to enter the command and watch for the output on the following line. AppleSoft interpreter is running in Immediate Mode. This means any valid BASIC command typed at the ']' prompt will be executed as soon as you press 'Return'. To make a longer program, you need to use line numbers. By putting a number less than 65536 at the beginning of your command line you signal AppleSoft BASIC to use Deferred Execution Mode. AppleSoft stores each line in memory one-by-one as you type them. Execution is deferred until you command AppleSoft to begin executing your program. The next example is very familiar to programmers everywhere. Enter the line shown below and the command RUN (followed by 'Return') to begin execution: 

10 print "Hello, World!"
run

If you typed correctly then AppleSoft displays the greeting "Hello, World!" Congratulations on your first IIgs program!

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