Re: trying to get an Apple II GS going for fun...

[wizard@direct.ca (Astro)]

On 11 May 1999 04:17:22 GMT, supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:

>No.  HFS is the ideal 3.5" format for transfer and indeed even for
>use on the IIGS.  The HFS FST is not a utility.  It is a module of
>the IIGS System Software.

I'm eagerly awaiting my mail-order System 5.0.4, it'll arrive this
week...
In the meantime I am delving into a fair bit of theoretical
forecasting...
  
>All IIGS programs communicate to
>storage devices through FSTs.  Without a ProDOS FST, GS/OS
>will not be able to use the ProDOS file system either. 

You load ProDOS by using a boot disk? You would use a ProDOS boot disk
as opposed to, in my case [given my hardware limitations] the System
5.0.4 system disk? If this is yes, is the ProDOS boot disk itself a
disk image?

>The concept of the FST is foreign to the Macintosh, which must
>use hacks like PC Exchange to get around this lack of capability.
>Linux and OS/2 have the equivalent of FSTs.  Like GS/OS, these
>two OS are file system independent.

...File System Translators. Sort of like a Driver? But more like ...I
don't understand Japanese without an interpreter?

>You can install the FST from System 6.0.1 into System 5.0.4 and
>it will work.  It'll even work from a floppy boot disk of 5.0.4.  I've
>tried it before.

How do you extract the HFS FST from System 6.0.1?

>Yes, using .shk archives.  These are made by a program called
>Shrinkit GS which is similar to StuffIt for the Mac and WinZip for
>Windows.  Much more efficient than disk images, these archives
>are compressed.  Disk images are inefficient and are only
>tolerated by emulator users.

That way, you can load up a disk with way more stuff than just with a
single disk image. But a disk image would make a self-booting floppy,
or just a big single file. I guess the System 5.0.4 would not know how
to read a disk image unaided?

>Until recently, there was not even any way to run a disk image into a 
>real IIGS disk on the IIGS!

What is that way?

>Disk images are mainly meant for non-hard drive aware games
>and other stuff and thus are used by emulators.  Real IIGS
>users don't like disk images much.

Real IIGS users probobly have hard drives for one thing, huh? Heheh,
well... my project has to go ahead with a bargain-basement budget. I'm
sure over time, perhaps over many years I will encounter upgrade parts
to drop into it. This is a little side project as I maintain a PowerPC
for productivity.

>Most IIGS programs come in .shk archives, sometimes with
>installer programs that copy the right files into the right directories,
>just like PC archives that explode the right files into the different
>Windows directories.

Would this indeed be assuming one has a hard drive to copy the files
into? Or can you use another floppy? The ShrinkIt archives can't be
executable when they are compressed, right? You would have to
uncompress them first and then execute them?

>>4] Is an 800k 3.5" floppy disk described as a piece of hardware as a
>>"DSDD" disk?
>>Yup.  They format to 800k on the IIGS and the Mac, 880k on the
>Amiga, and 720k on Win/DOS PCs.

That's about the most amazing thing I have learned yet, imagine my
surprise!!!

Oh hey, this is my first major posting to a newsgroup and today I
received my FIRST spam e-mail message... I think they may have trawled
my e-mail address out of my postings here... What sort of precautions
does anybody take? Just curious...

Hey by the way... thanks to everyone who takes and has taken the time
to follow this thread and answer my questions and stuff... Sure have
learned a lot. Special thanks go out to Supertimer and Rubywand.

Everywhere you look, it's all Science...

~~~Astro~~~ 
Vancouver, BC
http://persweb.direct.ca/wizard/arcana/default.htm