!pr1
Will ProDOS Work on a Franklin?.....................Bob Stout

If you try to boot up ProDOS on a Franklin, it probably will fail.  The ProDOS boot routine checks to see if you are in a genuine Apple monitor ROM.  However, you can make it work.

Start the boot procedure; when meaningful action appears to have ceased, press the RESET switch.  Get into the monitor and type 2647:EA EA and 2000G.  Voila!


Will Rockwell 65C02's work in an old Apple..........Bob Stout

Not unless you have the 2 MHz part.  For some reason the timing is too tight and slightly different to use a 1MHz 65C02, unless you have an Apple //e.  The 2 MHz chips WILL work in Apple II and II Plus.


Will ProDOS Really Fly?....................Bob Sander-Cederlof

ProDOS appears to have been eclipsed by MacIntosh.  The major software houses are probably putting their main effort into Mac.

ARTSCI has announced a ProDOS version of their MagiCalc spreadsheet program.  Owners of the DOS 3.3 version may upgrade for $40, new customers pay $149.95.  The only differences claimed are faster disk I/O and ability to edit the printer setup string.  Nice, but $40 is a lot.  And the spreadsheet files would no longer be accessible to DOS-based utilities.

ARTSCI will also send you their ProDOS catalog sorter program, complete with BASIC.SYSTEM, CONVERT, FILER, and the ProDOS image for only $24.95.  Apple will reputedly be selling ProDOS with a user's manual and some tutorial files in addition to the files on ARTSCI's disk, but price and date are still unclear.  (You get them free with a new disk drive.)

Practical Peripherals has announced a new clock card which is ProDOS compatible.  Their design is apparently an upgrade of Superclock II (by Jeff Mazur, Westside Electronics).  ProDOS was designed around Thunderclock, so other clocks must either emulate one of the Thunderclock modes or patch ProDOS during the boot process.  Applied Engineering's new Timemaster II emulates Thunderclock and several others, so it is fully ProDOS compatible.

According to Don Lancaster, Applewriter //e has been written so that changing to ProDOS would be easy.  Therefore we might expect a ProDOS-based version of this popular word processor to be announced soon.  Or maybe they won't bother to announce it.

Meanwhile, I know of at least two people with plans to integrate the faster RWTS ProDOS uses into their enhanced DOS 3.3 packages.  Have you seen the latest ads for David-DOS?  Dave Weston compares the speeds of his fast DOS with DOS 3.3 and Pro-DOS.  Guess what ... Pro-DOS doesn't win.

Unless you MUST have file compatibility with Apple /// SOS; or you MUST have hard hard-disk support for very large files; or you MUST have a hierarchical file directory; then stick with DOS 3.3, enhanced by Dave, or Bill Basham, or Art Schumer, or others.  And if you MUST have at least 32K of program space with Applesoft; or you MUST have Integer BASIC support; or you MUST have compatibility with hundreds of existing software products; then stick with DOS 3.3.

