Re: Converting 2mg's back to real hardware?

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

Xerxes409 <colin_tokyo@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Since then (through emulation) I've been reinstalling System 6.0.1,
> cleaning stuff up in general, and making nice fresh 32MB ProDOS
> partitions.
> 
> Now, here are some questions: 
> 
> 1. How do I get that stuff back on the GS?
> 2. How do you partition drives under ProDOS?
> 3. What kind of (new?) hard disk should I buy? What's the maximum
> number of ProDOS partitions? Is there a size limitation from System
> 6.0.1?

If you have a RamFAST SCSI Card, you can hold a key down while booting
to bring up the RamFAST utilities menu (I think it's keypad 0).  If not,
boot System 6.0.1 and run ADU (Advanced Disk Utilities).  I found that I
had to switch from the RamFAST to an Apple HS SCSI when my 80MB drive died
and I replaced it with a 2GB, so it was necessary to partition with ADU.

You can write the volumes directly to your SCSI drive from Windows using
CiderPress by connecting the Apple II drive to your PC.  Open the hard
drive with the "volume copier" tool, click on the partition, and then
click "load from file".  The partition must be at least as large as the
partition stored in the 2MG file.  (CiderPress does not partition hard
drives, so you still have to do that on a Mac or Apple II.)

If you are copying data from a smaller or larger partition, you'll
probably want to do it file-by-file rather than a block image copy.
Open the 2MG file, set "sort" to "original order", hit Ctrl-A to select
all files, hit Ctrl-C to copy them to the Windows clipboard, then open
the hard drive with "open volume", hit Ctrl-V to paste, and select the
partition you want the files to go into.  Make sure "clip pathnames" is
turned off, or it'll try to paste everything into the volume directory
(which has a 51-file limit).  Win98 has a 16MB limit, so if you're using
Win98/ME and have large volumes you'll need to do it in two pieces.

You may also want to enable lower-case filenames in Edit->Preferences,
since you're almost certainly using ProDOS 8 v1.8 or newer.

If the above all sounds freaky, create a new 32MB ProDOS volume (or however
big your partitions are) with New->Create Disk Image and play with that.
When it comes out looking the way you want, boot it up in KEGS to verify
that it works.  Then, just block copy the whole thing over.  If you're not
sure exactly how big your partitions are on the new disk, open the disk
with the volume copier.  It'll show you the size in blocks.

The Macintosh partitioning scheme doesn't have a practical limit on the
number of partitions.  I don't remember what sort of limit GS/OS has,
but in ProDOS 8 you're going to be limited by the number of slots you
can assign things to.  The CFFA FAQ says there's a 13 volume limit.
I use five ProDOS partitions (four with data, one is a scratch volume
that I used to block-copy floptical disks on and off of) and six kinds
of other drives (two 5.25", one 3.5", /RAM, /RAM5, floptical), so I'm
pretty close to the limit without going crazy with the partitions.

At any rate, you should be able to copy 32MB of data on and off the drive
in about five seconds from your PC, so it's easy to experiment once you
have it partitioned.

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