Re: I just got FOCUS drive - help with partitioning!

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Blake Patterson <blake@blakespot.com> wrote:

>	I just received my FOCUS IIgs drive (540MB) from Alltech.
>
>	Booted it up and found ProDOS 8 and Copy II+ 8.3 on the drive -- and
>nothing else.  (Way to go Alltech!)  After taping up the half-ripped-off
>label that that says "Removing this seal voids warranty" (the one that
>normally conceals that hole into the drive), I feel it's time to get to
>work installing GS/OS.

That is very strange.  Focus drives for the IIGS have always come
with System 6.0.1 and IIGS software from the responses I've
read from Focus owners on csa2.  It almost seems like they sent
you the IIe formatted version by mistake.

You can install GS/OS yourself, but after you do so you need to
copy the Focus driver from their floppy disk to the drivers folder
of the hard drive boot partition, otherwise the Focus is going to
be S-L-O-W (as in 1/4 normal speed).

Alternatively, you can contact them and have them put the IIGS
formatting (GS/OS plus software) on your drive as they should
have.

>	Now...there's 17 ProDOS partitions there now.  I've been told a good
>idea is to leave 5-6 of them and then make the rest HFS.  But there's
>bugs in the FST apparently for HFS which can be remedied by a patch that
>I'll search for.  But in general -- after doing this.  What will and
>won't work on that HFS partition.  That is -- will most GS/OS friendly
>apps run on that partition??  What should be my rule of thumb in
>deciding where to put what app?  
>		
>	Thanks!

The patch is available on ground somewhere and depending
on where you got the System 6.0.1 disks, it may already
have been applied to your HFS FST.

As for what works and what does not, basically any 16-bit
program for GS/OS or its predecessor, ProDOS 16, will
work in HFS volumes.  Reserve the ProDOS volumes for
ProDOS 8 (IIe) software.

Bonified GS/OS programs like AppleWorks GS 1.1, for
example, run from HFS partitions, but so do very old
16-bit software that assume ProDOS 16, such as IIGS
Tetris.  So if it runs from the 16-bit OS on the IIGS, it
will work on an HFS partition.  If it requires the launching
of ProDOS 8 or a proprietary OS, it won't.

The partitioning program is called Focus Formatter and
is on the disk provided with the Focus.  You need to
boot from a GS/OS boot disk to run this program since
it is GS/OS based.  I'd personally leave two or three
32MB ProDOS partitions and divide the rest into two
or three HFS partitions.  Having less partitions helps
avoid having too many drive icons hogging up the Finder
desktop.