Re: Apple DOS 3.2 help! HOW?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <m%8U5.53$c55.736@dca1-nnrp2.news.digex.net>,
Frank Townsend <ftownsen@iamdigex.net> wrote:
 
> "Paul Schlyter" <pausch@saaf.se> wrote in message
> news:8vqgtp$g97$1@merope.saaf.se...
>> In article <NgNT5.27$iZ4.385@dca1-nnrp2.news.digex.net>,
>> Frank Townsend <ftownsen@iamdigex.net> wrote:
>>
>>> MUFFIN converts 13 sector DOS 3.2 diskettes to 16 sector diskettes.
>>
>> It does NOT !!!!  The 13-sector diskette will still be a 13-sector
>> diskette even after you've been running MUFFIN on it!
>
> Muffin converts 13 sector DOS 3.2 diskettes and the programs they contain to
> 16 sector.  It does this by rearranging the information and writing it to a
> 16 sector diskette.
> 
> As Paul points out (using up 5 exclamation points in the process), the
> source diskette remains unchanged by the MUFFIN conversion.
 
A conversion implies a change of some kind, yet you admit yourself that the
13-sector diskette remains unchanged after this process.  Therefore the
13-sector diskette has not been converted in any way.
 
What is converted though is the low-level format of the storage of
the files: it is indeed converted from 5+3 nibblization to 6+2
nibblization.  However, unless one deals directly with that low-level
representation, one doesn't usually refer to this as "conversion".
There are low-level conversion going on all the time in a computer:
as soon as you load e.g. a BASIC program, it's converted from
magnetic storage on disk to electric storage within the RAM chips.
And if you upload or download a file over your modem, there are at
least a dozen or so conversions before the file finally arrive at its
destination.  However one doesn't usually refer to these activities
as "conversion".
 
 
If you copied files from a floppy to a hardddisk then, by your
vocabulary, you would have "converted" that floppy to a harddisk.
 
 
 
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