Re: Media migration - archiving old computer floppies onto CDR

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

curtus123@aol.com (Curtis Takaya) wrote:

>The problem I have with "media migration", i.e. having to
>copy your data over to a different form of media every
>10-15 years when the media starts to die, is that there is no
>easy way to do this with copy protected floppy disks on
>non-IBM computers. Even if you manage to make a back
>up of copy protected floppies, you still have to make the
>back up onto another floppy and deal with the same
>demagnetization problem in another decade.
>
>For an Apple, use Dalton Disk Disintegrator and null
>modem the images over at 9600 baud.
>
>Any suggestions on how to archive these disks onto
>CDR would be appreciated.

First of all, this is the wrong way to archive Apple II data.
The Apple IIGS has serial ports that can null modem at
56k, so even if you wanted to null modem, you would
not want to do it at 9600!  ;-)

Second, the Apple IIGS' OS, GS/OS, can easily handle
multiple file systems.  It can read old Apple II DOS 3.3
or ProDOS on the one hand and ISO9660 CD-ROM
format, MS-DOS FAT, or Macintosh HFS on the other.

Thus, the easiest way to archive your old Apple II
software is to store them on a IIGS hard drive partition.
This can be a ProDOS 32MB partition or an HFS
partition of easily 1GB or more.  But the easiest way
is to connect a 100MB Zip disk to the IIGS and copy
(or ShrinkIt GS archive) all your disks to the Zip disk
formatted as an HFS volume.

Then take the Zip disk to the PC.  Then use your
CDR burner to duplicate the Zip volume onto CD.
Sure, you waste 500+ MB of the CDR's space, but
it is easier.  Of course if you use a 1GB Jazz drive
partitioned to 650MB HFS instead, you won't waste
any space.

Or you can simply use MS-DOS FAT formatted Zips
or Jazzes because the IIGS can write to these using
the MUG! desk accessory.

When you burn the disc, however, you will want
to use either ISO9660 or HFS because these are the
two formats that the IIGS will recognize on CD-ROMs.

Now if the Apple II program is 16-bit IIGS specific,
then that program can actually be launched from
and run from an HFS CD-ROM, so you would
not mess with disk images at all.  Simply copy your
IIGS program files to the Zip or Jazz, use the PC
to burn a copy on CDR, then take the disc back
to your Apple IIGS CD-ROM drive and run the
programs right off the CD-ROM!

Check out http://www.crl.com/~joko for several
Apple IIGS CD-ROMs that are like this.