Re: GS/OS for xgs emulator?

[jefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 12 Mar 1997 02:27:20 GMT, nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) wrote:

>   There are GS/OS 6.0.1 disks on Apple's FTP sites in formats that DO
>NOT require Apple disks. Files in .BSQ archives are packed by Shrinkit
>('nulib' compression)a publically available format, which can be
>unpacked to an 800K file. I can download system 6.0.1 to my unix account,
>and end up with 6 800K files. And that's without ever touching a
>real Apple II. Therefore, your whole argument about PC vs Apple disks
>is pointless and stupid.

I figured someone else would mention this by now but having read this
thread for the past few days, I haven't seen it yet which really
surprises me.

XGS does not directly deal with ShrinkIt archives, but then again,
neither does a real IIgs.  You have to use utility programs to access
what is in the archive.  On the IIgs this means downloading a copy of
GSHK and for XGS it means downloading Nulib.

The XGS web page has links to Nulib and a collection of utilities that
are to be used with XGS.

Using Nulib on a .SDK archive gives you a 800k file that can then be
converted to an XGS disk image with the raw2img utility.  This means
that those six 800k files that you got in your example above would
simply have to be run through raw2img to get XGS images of them which
you could then use to install GS/OS onto a hard disk image.

Also included in the utilities is another utility to convert Mac
DiskCopy images to XGS images.

There are also utilities available for copying individual files to
disk images, although none are specifically for XGS at present, so
once you have a bootable system disk image and have a copy of GSHK on
a disk image, you can then simply copy all the .SHK files to disk
images and unpack them with GSHK with the emulator.

There may be an extra step or two involved but it is certainly not
difficult and seeing as XGS is currently only a beta at version 0.47c,
those extra steps might disappear in the future.

And actually, these extra steps can be avoided completely once you
have an operating system and communications program put onto a disk
image.  I know that ApplePC allows the emulator to access the PC's COM
ports and you can transfer files directly to disk images just like you
were using a real Apple II and never have to worry about moving them
from the PC's directory to a disk image.  I don't know if XGS's
supports this feature yet or not.

Admitedly, it would be nice to have an easier way to get files from
the PC hard drive to disk images.  Maybe a pop-up dialog while in the
emulator or making the PC's hard drive look like a network drive or
something.

>   The major problem is that the emulator authors have chosen to shaft
>the publically documented, universally accepted, and very useful Apple
>II standard of transmitting files and disks-- .SHK files. They've gone
>off on some mostly irrelevant tangent for disk images, which is real
>Apple II unfriendly, stupid, and a waste of everyone's time. Your
>problem lies with the emulators, NOT Apple, disk formats, or anything
>else.

I don't think the emulator authors have shafted anyone.  My question
to you would be, why should a programmer waste his time writing a
program to unpack ShrinkIt archives when he has already written a
program that allows you to run ShrinkIt to unpack ShrinkIt archives?

Sorry about the long post but it is something I wanted to come out in
this thread or people might not realize that it is possible and not as
big a problem as some might think.