Gideon Zenz wrote:
So I thought about transfering data the most simple way - pluging my pc soundcard into the tape port of the Apple. I'm not sure if this is possible at all, but that's my idea: - Write a small basic program which reads out a disk on an emulator, run-length encode it so we spare all those repeating bytes, and save it to tape. I found an emulator which supports writing the tape-i/o as a wave-file to disk. - Later I connect the pc and mac, write a (hopefully) simple basic program on the apple so it loads from tape, decodes and writes to disk, and then play back the wave file.
If i got it right the tape does 300 bytes per second, so if we can squeeze the 140kb floppy image to let's say 80kb it should fit into the memory (i think one of the many cards in the apple is a ram-expension so i've got 128kb) and it should just take about 5 minutes to transfer.
I don't think that is quite correct... 128K is not enough to hold a compressed disk and a program to compres it and a program to send it. There is just not enough ram. But you could send a sector or block at a time, I would think.
Impossible?
No.
Done before?
Not exactly.
What do you think?
Great project to attempt.
And where do i find the docs i need for Basic?
Do a google search for CSA2 FAQs and BASIC.
Especially on reading/writing to floppy/tape etc?
Find the Red book reference and read all you can in that regarding the tape routines and the hardware iterface.
After that, you may want to consider writing yor program in assembly language instead of BASIC, it would give you better control and allow you to more easily flip bytes form one location to another.
Just some thoughts, Ed