What better way to spend a snowy day off than playing with your Apple III? I can’t think of any. I installed the ProFile interface card, connected it up to the drive, said a prayer (I do that a lot with these things) and powered it up. Considering the age and sensitivity often attributed to Seagate’s ST-506 hard disk, I was pleasantly surprised to see (and hear – wow, it’s loud!) the drive spin up and the red Ready light glowing steadily. It took more than a minute to grind its way through its start up diagnostics, but it does get there.
ProFile I/O card in slot 4, UPIC on the right in slot 1
ProFile card mounted in the Apple III
The next step was to check whether the Apple III could see and communicate with the drive. Booting up the System Utilities brought me more good news. Not only did I not have to go through the driver patching process required to load new drivers into the System disk, but the drive happily supplied its contents to the screen when requested.
Profile in the Device list
Profile file listing
It appears that the Catalyst program has been installed on the ProFile (along with a ton of other software), so I think that’s my next step. The Apple III can’t actually boot to the ProFile, so I have to learn how to access the programs. I’m sure its an easy procedure (in fact most of this restoration has gone surprisingly well), but I don’t know how… yet.
Apple III with ProFile
