Re: Apple Disk Drives

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Mitchell Spector <a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:

> "Mark Cummings" <NOTfigjams@primus.com.au> wrote:
> 
> >I gather my GS will object to these 400K MFS disks with the HFS.FST ?
> >PS. never mind missing out on the $171 ROM-3, another time, another place...
> 
>     The HFS.FST only deals with HFS volumes, so yes, MFS disks will
> not be recognized

They will be recognised as MFS, and you will get a dialog box informing
you that you need an appropriate FST to access the disk, with an option
to eject (it might also have a button to let you initialize the disk).

GS/OS defines several file system identifiers for use by FSTs (in fact,
they were also defined by ProDOS-16, despite it not having support for
FSTs).  Recent versions of GS/OS include enough code to recognise most
of them.  You would get a similar message if you tried to mount an HFS
volume but didn't have the HFS FST on your startup volume.

>     There is a small utility called "MacTransGS" that can extract
> files from MFS disks.

Aha!  That's the name which I was trying to remember.

> I remember it was written under Applesoft BASIC and ran on any Apple II
> model, despite the name. Also, ZZCopy would recognize and copy MFS diskettes.

I expect that Copy II+ would also be able to copy them, as long as you
use the bit copy program in sector copy mode.  It might not cope in the
normal utilities.