Apple IIGS CD-ROM

A look at some CD-ROMS supported on the Apple IIGS.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Apple
• IIGS
• CD-ROM
• drive
• applecd
• cd
• 300
• 150
• discquest
• discpassage
• multimedia
• audubon
• mammals
• GEM
• Generous
• Efforts
• of
• Many
• Golden
• Orchard
• digisoft

[TheFrugalGamer]

I really need to start getting into Apple stuff. The only Apple machine I have ever used was at grade school. I played Oregon Trail and Math Munchers on it. I've never even owned an Ipod. There has to be a reason they are so popular.

[BrianPicchi]

@TheFrugalGamer

Don't worry, I've never owned an iPod either. Generic mp3 players are way cheaper and I don't use itunes so no point. Also, Apple II computers are the only Apple products I've ever bought, although I have a feeling I will finally cave and get an iPhone soon :)

[NJRoadfan]

The CD-SC/150 uses a non-standard command set for Audio CD playback. The 300 used the standard SCSI2 commands (which the RamFAST has drivers for). Yes, I have played audio CDs on my IIgs/w CD-SC+, its possible! The CD-SC's eject button works on the RamFAST, should on the Apple card too. I think the ";1" at the end of files can be killed by unchecking "add version number to files" when burning a new disc. The only IIgs software I have on CD is the System 6 Golden Master CD, never tried discquest.

[BrianPicchi]

@NJRoadfan

I read about there being drivers for the RamFast SCSI to make it work with SCSI-II drives, but I have a sandwich II card. I'm glad to get confirmation that the audio CD does in fact work though. I'll keep my eyes open for a RamFAST card or CD 150, whichever I find first :)

[mattj65816]

I'm amazed at how smoothly you're scrolling around that image at 8:50. I think you said in a previous video that your IIgs is accelerated, but I wouldn't have expected to have been that responsive. I have a ZipGS that runs at 16MHz but I don't really have any software that exercises it like that.

[BrianPicchi]

@mattj65816

It's true, the accelerated CPU makes picture scrolling a whole lot smoother. You see choppy lines as you scroll through those images in a stock IIGS. I was using a 10MHz ZipGSX in this demonstration.

[MobyGamer]

You mentioned something about "corrupt characters" when viewing a text file being possibly due to a bad CDROM burn -- looking at the characters, the only character that is "corrupt" seems to be the linefeed character. So it's not a bad burn, it's just a bad CR/LF conversion.

[madmax2069]

I know with many old CD Rom Drives would play audio CDs but would not output it to the system itself and would output sound through its earphone jack instead. when you would normally stick a audio CD in these drives it would automatically start playing it from track 1 and would continue till the end (usually had control buttons). I cant really tell but it seems as this drive doesn't have any control buttons (play, skip and others) so i don't know if this unit would be the same way or not.

[BrianPicchi]

@phreakindee

I had heard about the Apple IIe and IIGS supporting CD-ROMs but never looked much into it, but after researching it, I was surprised to learn just how supportive it was by being able to play music CDs and some Macintosh and PC software. Just too cool.

[mattj65816]

@vwestlife CD-ROM support was something that Apple threw at the cantankerous Apple II clingers at the time to quiet them down a bit (I was one of them at the time.) "See? We're still supporting you." There were several pieces of software and hardware for the IIgs that came to life that way--GS/OS 6, the external SuperDrive and its controller card, etc. There really wasn't much of a market into which they were putting that stuff.