Re: Disk images: from //e to Mac via PC?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

mrsparkle@hokkaido.jp (S Robson) wrote:

>Perhaps this is in the FAQ, which I don't see here right now, but...
>
>I've got boxes and boxes of 5.25" disks filled with old Apple //e data on
>them. Before they go bad and all my old work is lost forever, I want to
>transfer them to my Mac so I can keep them around and work with them under
>emulation. I'd rather not futz with a null modem connection because of
>space constraints, the sheer number of disks I want to process, &c.
>
>However, a possible solution just moved in last month: a housemate who
>owns a Wintel box with both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives. Now, before she
>swaps out that old floppy drive for a $50 32x CD-ROM reader, I'd like to
>use the PC to read my 5.25" disks and write them to DOS-formatted
>high-density floppies in a disk image format that the Mac-based Apple ][
>emulators will understand. Anyone know of a pertinent PC util that can do
>that?

This is not going to work...PC 5.25" disks have a different low level
encoding than Apple 5.25" disks.

The easiest way to transfer from an Apple IIe to Macintosh is to put
a 3.5" drive onto the IIe.  You'll need to go through ProDOS disks
through this route, which can be rather time consuming.

By far the easiest way is to get an Apple IIGS (www.ebay.com has
some auctioning in the Mac area).  With the Apple IIGS, you have
THREE methods to transfer files.  FIRST, you can do like a IIe with
a 3.5" drive and put the files on a ProDOS 3.5" disk.  A faster and
more reliable method is to use Macintosh HFS 800k (double
density) 3.5" disks to do the transfers...Apple IIGS with System
6.0.1 can read Mac HFS disks.  The Apple IIGS does a better job
reading Mac disks than Mac does of reading ProDOS IIe disks.
The third method, and perhaps the best if you have many files, is
to set up an AppleTalk network between the GS and Macintosh.
The GS has AppleTalk built in, like Macintosh does.  You'll be
able to transfer files at 230kbits per second...several times faster
than even 56k modems!