Some dsk problems solved

["Frank Townsend" <ftownsen@iamdigex.net>]

I reported some time ago about problems I was having converting DSK images
back to disks.   These were ones that worked fine in emulators, but that I
couldn't make a real disk from.

I am pleased to report I believe I have identified the problem.

My system is as follows:

I currently run a Mac LCII with a IIe card, and an Asante EN/SC SCSI to
Ethernet box attached to the local network.  The Mac has the free NCSA
Telnet client installed, which has an FTP server.

I download DSK files to my PC (then unzip them or whatever), then use
CuteFTP to upload files to the Mac.

At that point, I was using ProType to fix the files and (I thought) unfork
them.  Then I would copy the file to a ProDOS disk and run the IIe card to
make disks or whatever.

This seemed to work fine, _except_ that some DSK files would never work
correctly when extracted with DSK2FILE.

ResEdit seemed a Bad Idea, because opening a file with ResEdit brought up a
popup box threatening to fork the file.

However, I have discovered the following:

1.  Some DSK files would not extract correctly with DSK2FILE because ProType
could not fix the file type correctly.

2.  Although ResEdit will fork a file if you *open* the file, it will allow
creator and file type changing through the "Get file/folder info" dialog box
without adding a fork.  The parameters displayed can be altered!!

3.  DSK files that would not extract correctly worked fine when their file
type was changed (in ResEdit) to TEXT, and the creator to pdos (case
sensitive).  As David Empson has pointed out in another post, the Mac file
type doesn't really seem to make a difference, as long as it is a type that
makes sense to PC Exchange.  I also understand that using a file type of
TEXT should make changing the creator to pdos unnecessary.

4. The length of the DSK files that worked when extracted went from 285 to
283 when the file type/creator issue was handled correctly (reason for
this???).

5.  Examination of a lot of files uploaded from CuteFTP to the Mac revealed
that no data forks were created with my FTP transfers.



Anyway, I thought this might be interesting to someone.