Apple IIGS: How To Start Up from Floppy Disk Using Aristotle



I'm using Apple IIGS computers with a menu management program and a
Macintosh file server. The menu management program is set as the startup
application. I'm not using a network startup or "boot disk" and I don't
want to. Here's my setup:

Slot 1 AppleTalk
Slot 7 AppleTalk
Startup AppleTalk

I don't want to reconfigure my Control Panel just to be able to start up
from a floppy disk. But with my current settings, if I press
Control-Open-Apple-Reset, the floppy drives don't do anything.

I need a way to start up from a floppy without changing any of my Control
Panel settings. Can I create a program in BASIC and put it in my menu
management program? Would this BASIC program, when selected, cause my
Apple IIGS to start up from the floppy drive?

There are two ways to do what you want:

First Method
------------
1) Interrupt the boot process by pressing Control-Reset while the
system is booting. This will give you the "]" prompt.

2) Type "PR#6" to tell the computer to start up from the controller
card in slot 6. (If you're starting up from a 3.5-inch floppy disk, use
5 instead.)

Second Method
-------------
To do the same thing through Aristotle, simply create a BASIC program with
the following line:

10 PR#6

Save this program and set it up as an Aristotle menu item. The problem
here is that you must start up all the way into Aristotle before you'll get
back to the ability to boot from a local drive. Control-Reset will give
you the ability to boot from a local drive much sooner.


Published Date: Feb 18, 2012