Re: Copying IIe disks on a IIgs

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

livepoet@together.net (Kevin Smith) wrote:

>I've never owned a IIe, so I haven't had much experience with using
>IIe programs on a IIgs.  A friend of mine recently gave me a load of
>software on 5.25 disks for a IIe, and I'd like to copy it onto my
>IIgs' harddrive.  However, the finder cannot recognize the disks and
>asks me to initialize them.  I know the disks aren't bad, because I
>can boot up from them.  How would I copy/run IIe files through the
>finder?

Assuming you are running System 6.0.1 on the IIGS,
your IIe disks are most likely formatted in DOS 3.3
(not MS-DOS 3.3 but AppleDOS 3.3).  This was a
pre-ProDOS operating system.  To read files off these
disks, you need to install the DOS 3.3 FST.  Boot
the Install floppy of the System 6.0.1 disk set, select
the custom install option and scroll down the list until
you find the DOS 3.3 file system translator (FST)
option and then install it.  Then you'd need to reboot
your computer to take advantage of it.

Some IIe programs can't be installed on hard disk,
though.  To run those, go into BASIC (double click
on the BASIC.System program) and type PR#6 with
the IIe disk you want to run in the 5.25 drive.  This
is because some IIe programs must be booted from
floppy.