Apple II GS help!

[this is funah]

my friend has acquired an 1987 model of the Apple II GS via salvation army store for only $15 (with printer!).

the computer boots up, the monitor works, the disk drive (3.5" floppy) works, and everything seems to be functioning okay. but, it's only booting up from the disk in the disk drive, which is AppleWorks, so theres no GUI OS. or i cant find it. trying to boot up without a disk in the drive just notifies that it is checking the disk.

i am a little confused, is my friend missing a required disk to boot up in a Mac OS? it has a mouse, so there must be a GUI somewhere.

 

[KingSleaze]

my friend has acquired an 1987 model of the Apple II GS via salvation army store for only $15 (with printer!).

the computer boots up, the monitor works, the disk drive (3.5" floppy) works, and everything seems to be functioning okay. but, it's only booting up from the disk in the disk drive, which is AppleWorks, so theres no GUI OS. or i cant find it. trying to boot up without a disk in the drive just notifies that it is checking the disk.

i am a little confused, is my friend missing a required disk to boot up in a Mac OS? it has a mouse, so there must be a GUI somewhere.

The Apple II GS was the final incarnation of the Apple II line. It is not a Mac OS machine. It used an OS called PRODOS, small enough to be on 3.5" floppies along with the application. The II GS didn't come with a hard drive, but there was a third party company that did make a hard drive that would go into it.
I'm not sure if I still have any of my old II GS programs still around.

 

[aquajet]

There are disk images on Apple's FTP site with System 6 for the IIgs. I believe it's also referred to as "GS/OS", but the IIgs could also run PRODOS, which older Apple II's used (like the IIe). GS/OS is similar to System 6 for the Mac (which is also ancient), but it won't run Mac programs from that era.

Here's a link:
http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html

 

[MacEffects]

Yes, there were many ways to mod the Apple IIgs to have a GUI, however those are a bit confusing to use, but since it seems you just want it for show, then I'm sure thats fine. I'd do a eBay search for such a disk, since I think they are 400k and/or 800k disks only with the right format to be read by the IIgs, it is however possible to make your own, but it is very hard.