Re: Help on Trackstar & Apple Emulators

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Marcus writes ...
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I have purchased a trackstar Apple II e emulator and I want to transfer my
> Apple II disks to the PC so that I can use them with a software emulator.
> Transferring to PC works fine and fast with the trackstar, but the images
> cannot be read by another emulator.
> 
 ....

     By a TrackStar "image", I guess you mean a trackstore disk file-- i.e. an
.app virtual disk file which TrackStar uses as a disk. For example, you are
probably using a virtual disk as your Slot 6, Drive 2.

     A trackstore disk image of a ProDOS 140kB disk appears to vaguely
resemble a .nib disk image file. However, it is larger (about 266kB vs. about
233kB) and it is rejected by AppleWin.

     One way to get your stuff from Apple II diskette to an image file which
popular emulators can use is DSK2FILE. Running DSK2FILE on your TrackStar, you
can create a .dsk disk image file of a diskette (in your Slot 6, Drive 1 Apple
II drive) on your TrackStar's virtual hard disk (in Slot 7).

     The new .dsk file can, then, be transferred from your TrackStar virtual
hard disk to some folder on your PC using the TrackStar File Transfer utility.



     All of which may lead to the question: How do I get DSK2FILE going on my
TrackStar?

     Of course, if you have DSK2FILE on an Apple II diskette, there's no
problem. You just start it under ProDOS (e.g. from the BASIC prompt you enter
-DSK2FILE).

     If you have ShrinkIt on diskette, you are pretty close to having
DSK2FILE. You can download version 4.3 of DSK2FILE in a .shk file at ...

ftp://apple.cabi.net/pub/applegs/Utilities/DSK2FILE/

The .shk file is named DSK2FILE43.shk. After it is transferred using
TrackStar's File Transfer utility, the .shk can be unshrinked using ShrinkIt.
Version 4.3 is good for handling 5.25" .dsk files.

Note: The latest version is v5.0; but, according to the author's web page (at
http://net-24-42.dhcp.mcw.edu/dsk2file.html ) it contains a bug which affects
the handling of 5.25" disks.

     If you have neither DSK2FILE nor any version of ShrinkIt, see
Shrink2Plus.txt on Apple.Cabi.net at ...

ftp://apple.cabi.net/pub/applegs/Utilities/SHRINKITandGSHK/ .

     Both early and current 8-bit versions of ShrinkIt are in this folder. The
file Shrink2Plus.txt tells how to get an early version of ShrinkIt going. Once
the early (kind of user-unfriendly) version is running, you can unshrink the
current version (v3.4) and use it to handle tasks such as unshrinking
DSK2FILE43.shk.



Rubywand