Re: how to help an Apple IIe user help himself use disk images

[Warren Ernst <wernst@gmail.com>]

On Oct 1, 12:51 am, SlickRCBD <spamyours...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> I know somebody who just got his hands on an Apple IIe system, that has
> only 2 5.25" drives. NO hard drive, no 3.5" drive. Only 128K of RAM.
>
> How would he use a resource like Asimov to download games or other
> programs and copy them onto 5.25" disks so he can play them?
>
> He's been asking me to use my Apple IIGS, it's hard drive and LocalTalk
> connection to a PowerMac (Powermac downloads from internet, IIGS copies
> from the network to local, decompresses and writes) to do the job, but
> is there some way he can do it himself?
>
> The problem is that 5.25" disk images are larger than the capacity of a
> 5.25" disk, and the programs I use to write them back to floppy disks
> require them to be uncompressed. So, how would he get the disk image
> onto his computer in order to write them back to floppies? 128K of RAM
> means no RAMdisk like the way I use my PC Transporter card to store the
> uncompressed disk images on prior to writing.


He needs ADTPro (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/), a serial cable and a
super serial card (which I bet he has but doesn't know it), and a
modern mac or PC with a real serial port (usb converter dongles are
usually trouble), and a heck of a lot of blank floppies.

Then he can download all the disk images he wants on his Windows PC
and run ADTPro on the windows machine. To make life easy, you can make
an ADTPro floppy with your GS for his machine, and then he just boots
from it in drive 1, and then puts a blank in drive 2, and then ADTPro
will write out an Apple II disk in drive 2 from the DSK file on the
PC. It really works, and it's amazing.

If he wants to buy more hardware, he could get an Uthernet ethernet
card for the Apple II, and then transfer disk images that way - it
takes less than 20 seconds.

Hope this helps,
Warr