I chose the default speed of 4800 baud for Pi as a lowest common denominator that should work in almost any situation, even a IIc using Z-Link without any kind of hardware handshaking serial cable. It should be fine for command-line stuff, but might be slower than you’d like if you use any full-screen programs (like cftp) or are transferring with YMODEM.

You can try to use a faster baud rate with the following command:

baud baudRate

baudRate can be 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, or 115200. The change will take effect immediately (unless you’re not doing it from your Apple II itself, in which case it won’t do anything), so you’ll need to change the setting in ProTERM or Z-Link, too.

If you want to make the change permanent, with the change taking effect on logout, use:

baud -d baudRate

To see the current speed, just type baud by itself.

You’ll only be able to use 38400 or 57600 on a IIgs (and not with Z-Link), but Hugh Hood has come up with clever ProTERM macros that enable 115200 baud on any Apple II, and A2CLOUD provides them with ProTERM. If you use 115200 baud, you’ll likely drop some characters, especially on an 8-bit Apple II. One strategy you might want to try is to use a slower speed normally, but then “upshift” to 115200 for transfers. When you’re done, you can switch back to the slower speed.

To use Hugh’s macros, choose “Read Globals” from the “Misc” menu, and select either PT3.IIE.GLOBALS, PT3.IIC.GLOBALS, or PT3.IIGS.GLOBALS, depending on what computer you’re using. Then, for a IIe or IIc/IIc+, type solid-apple-F, and it will switch to 115200; you can still switch back to other speeds as usual from the “Online” window. For a IIgs, type shift-option-H, and it will switch to 115200 baud; to switch back to other speeds, type option-H to disable the macro. If you want these macros to automatically be available when ProTERM starts without having to use the “Read Globals” menu item, delete or rename PT3.GLOBALS, and then rename the appropriate globals file to PT3.GLOBALS.