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I inherited an old Apple IIe computer. I have a dual disk drive and connected to a modern TV screen as the original monitor was fried. On turning on the computer, nothing happens except "Apple ][" is displayed in middle top of screen. When inserting a game or other disk, there are whirring noises but nothing loads. If I hit CTRL-RESET I get the applesoft command prompt, and can run basic commands such as PRINT, but other queries such as CATALOG give me SYNTAX ERROR. I have a system master DOS 3.3 disk but that is also unresponsive when I reboot or use CTRL-APPLE OPEN-RESET combination. The funny thing is yesterday I did something that got some disks to play games (Sauron's Run and Miner), but today is back to unresponsive and all SYNTAX ERROR...I have searched online but cannot find any solution to this problem. I know the computer works and can run programs, but not what I am doing that causes it to stop reading disks etc.

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    Your floppy drives probably needs some cleaning of the head and lubrication of the mechanical parts. The oil tends to stiffens with time and makes reading diskettes not working correctly.
    – Patrick Schlüter
    Nov 28, 2022 at 7:22
  • Probably a combination of drive needing maintenance and some of your old floppies no longer readable, while others maybe Ok. Also worth noting is there are MANY modern alternatives to using floppies to load programs on an Apple //e.
    – Brian H
    Nov 28, 2022 at 14:40

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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If an Apple II boots without DOS, then the prompt you get only understands built-in Applesoft commands such as PRINT and LIST. Without DOS, the disk commands such as CATALOG will not be available (and will produce a "SYNTAX ERROR" message). Unfortunately, there's usually no visual way to distinguish a DOS boot from a non-DOS boot (the ] prompt looks the same).

On boot, if the system is unable to boot from a disk (whether there isn't one at all or whether there is one but it fails), there may not be any indication about what happened. So, if your disk drive is faulty and won't boot your DOS disk, then you will not have DOS commands available at the prompt.

You say that you were able to successfully boot a couple of disks, so it sounds like your disk drive is almost working. It may need a head clean or an alignment adjustment.

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  • Thanks very much for the responses. I just wish I could remember what I did the other day that loaded DOS such that the master system dos 3.3 disk did work as well as some other game disks I tried. I know that it wasn't working, then worked for a while and then I think I tried a disk that probably was faulty (they're all at least 25-30 years old), hit CTRL-RESET and then it went back to not reading any disks, including the ones that worked a few minutes ago.... If we assume it's not a faulty/dirty disk drive etc, is there another software solution to get computer to read disks again?
    – Andrew Highfield
    Nov 29, 2022 at 1:08
  • I ran out of space above, but if there is a disk drive issue and to troubleshoot fully, any suggestions on how to go about cleaning or alignment adjustments? Is that a reasonable DIY task or need to find an expert? Thanks again
    – Andrew Highfield
    Nov 29, 2022 at 1:17
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At the "]" prompt enter "PR#6" to boot from the disk (assuming the disk controller is in slot 6 which is the default).

If all your disks don't boot or occasionally boot, then your disk drive probably needs cleaning.

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