Re: IIe -> mac data transfer

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Roger Johnstone wrote:

>In <quartz-914E75.03442126062003@netnews.attbi.com> Quartz  wrote:
>
>>>[stuff I wrote]
>> 
>> couple things I forgot-
>> 
>> 
>> the files on the disks are plain text files AFAIK.
>> 
>> 
>> he had made some weirdo dongle/cable that had a PC paralelle port on 
>> one  end and a chip-like thing on the other. AFAIK he used this to 
>> transfer  stuff back and forth between his win9X machine and the apple, 
>> but I have  no idea how to use it or even where on the apple's 
>> motherboard the chip  plugs in. anyone familiar with the idea who can 
>> help me out?
>
>That cable will almost certainly plug into the internal game controller 
>port. The original Apple II used a 16-pin IC socket on the motherboard 
>to plug paddles and joysticks into, but it wasn't exactly convenient, so 
>when the Apple IIe came out Apple added a 9-pin D socket on the back. 
>The internal socket was retained though because it has extra signals on 
>it, most importantly some outputs. This allows it to be used as a 
>bidirectional data port, instead of using a serial card. The only 
>problem is that it requires special software on both ends. I've never 
>used this type of setup, so I don't know what the programs are called. 
>Assuming of course that your friend hadn't written the software himself :
>o)

The Apple II Oasis emulator for Windows uses just such an adapter
cable to allow very versatile file transfers between a real Apple
system and Apple II Oasis using .dsk images.  The program that
does this is part of the Apple II Oasis distribution and is called
Apple II Disk Server.

Apple II Oasis is shareware and is available at:

http://www.geocities.com/apl24win/

If the original poster wants to examine what is stored on the disks,
his best bet is to use the Apple system.  It is likely that the text
he is trying to find is stored as word processor files for the writer's
favorite word processor, and using that word processor will be the
easiest and most direct way to examine the files, as well as to
convert them to ASCII to be used on a more modern system.

-michael

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