Today was as good as any to set up my Apple IIgs, which has been in storage for a while. I don’t have a lot of desk space, so I really need to substitute something for that RGB monitor that comes with the IIgs. I don’t have a rare Second Sight VGA card, so I’ll have to make do with the composite video output until I find a good scan-doubler that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
I can’t use my main LCD monitor, because it only has VGA and DVI inputs. What I found that worked well enough is a 9” portable DVD player that has a switch to receive video input. Color output wasn’t acceptable, but when I switch GS/OS to use monochrome output, the screen was quite readable. Even 80-column text came out readable. It’s not as sharp as RGB, but for the convenience of not having that bulky monitor on my desk, it’s well worth it.
Just testing the DVD player a little bit more, the Apple IIc’s 80-column text mode came out the same way. However, since I rarely use my Apple IIc (which I also dearly love), it’ll have to stay in the work table in the garage.
With the Apple IIgs up and about, I see good times ahead. Yeah, I know I can run KEGS32 on my Windows box, or even Sweet16 on my old iBook (all of which I’ve also set up), but there’s some nostalgia involved working with real hardware. Besides, I need my IIgs networked with the rest of my gear, and Sweet16 is the only IIgs emulator so far that has support for Marinetti’s Uthernet link layer.
My setup consists of a ROM3 IIgs, 4MB GS RAM card from Briel Computers, ZipGS accelerator, RamFAST Rev D SCSI card, and a 4-partition CFFA card. I plan to get my Uthernet in there real soon, but there are a few tests I need to make using Marinetti’s MacIP link layer and the MacIP routers I’ve got. I hope to also get some development work in there, as time and resources permit.
Bahh, emulators! The real computer is always better!