Re: DOS 3.2 woes

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3CA19B77.8F3F272B@buckeye-express.com>,
Paul R. Santa-Maria <paulrsm@buckeye-express.com> wrote:
 
> Linards Ticmanis wrote:
>> Is any software on the Web somewhere that would allow creation of DOS
>> 3.2 disks without needing DOS 3.2 disks to begin with?
> 
> I have gen-u-wine Apple DOS 3.2.1 diskettes; I could make copies
> and send them to you.
> 
> On a more general note, what would be the best way to archive
> 13-sector disks?  I can think of two obvious ways.  (1) Write 
> a DOS 3.3 program that reads 13-sector disks and copies the
> sectors to a 16-sector disk.  This disk would not be directly
> usable, but you could use standard tools to archive it.  You
> would have a second program to read the 16-sector disk and 
> copy it to a 13-sector disk.  (2) Write a ProDOS program to
> read the 13-sector disk and copy it to a single file.  This
> file would be 116,480 bytes long and could fit on a floppy
> diskette.  Again, you would have a second program to format
> a 13-sector diskette and copy the contents of the file to it.
 
There are two other possibilities:
 
(3) Write a ProDOS program that reads 13-sector disks and copies the
sectors to a 16-sector disk.  This disk would not be directly usable,
but you could use standard tools to archive it.  You would have a
second program to read the 16-sector disk and copy it to a 13-sector
disk.  (4) Write a DOS 3.3 program to read the 13-sector disk and
copy it to a single file.  This file would be 116,480 bytes long and
could fit on a floppy diskette.  Again, you would have a second
program to format a 13-sector diskette and copy the contents of the
file to it.
 
 
And then we finally have the most obvious solution:
 
(5) Modify Paul Guertin's ADT program such that it works with
13-sector disks as well.  On the Apple II side ADT would have to run
under DOS 3.2 (or under DOS 3.3 with my "DubbelDOS" utility
installed), and on the PC side the .dsk file would become 13*35*256
bytes long rather than the usual 16*35*256.  Such a .dsk file would
be directly readable by my FID utility (available for free download
at http://home.tiscali.se/~pausch/apple2 ) since that program doesn't
just assume 35 tracks by 16 sectors but investigates the actual size
of the .dsk file, then looks for the VTOC at various places until it
finds one.
 
One additional problem with reading DOS 3.2 disks is that sectors
never written to won't have any data blocks, because DOS 3.2
formatting writes out only the address blocks, separated by gaps
large enough to fit a data block.  This is as opposed to DOS 3.3
which, during formatting, also writes out data blocks filled with 00h
data bytes.  But this should really be no problem, since the RWTS
returns an error code for this -- however reading all of a DOS 32 disk
may then become quite noisy and very slow....
 
Perhaps I should make this my summer project this summer, just like I
modified ADT to work with the Apple II Comm card two summers ago.
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se
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