Re: Looking for info on ProDOS disk format...

[Chris Morse <chris@invalid.com>]

On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 03:27:20 -0000, Rob Greene <anonymous> wrote:

>chris@invalid.com (CHRIS MORSE) wrote in news:3dd3f7b2.246116136
>@news.dsl.net:
>
>> 
>> I'm hoping to find info on the ProDOS disk format...
>> 
>> I'd like to write my own program that catalogs the contents of .DSK
>> images..  I found at http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/apple2/ a couple
>> programs (FID and a2tools) that work with DOS 3.3 disks, but I have
>> yet to find any info for ProDOS disks.
>> 
>> Or if anyone knows of a freeware program with source code that handles
>> ProDOS disks, that would be cool too.
>> 
>> Silly me- I used to have the book Beneath Apple DOS and Beneath Apple
>> ProDOS, but don't have them anymore.  Though, I'd be willing to buy
>> them off eBay if the price wasn't grossly high...
>> 
>> On another note, does anyone know if there is an archive of
>> comp.sys.apple2.* articles?  I think google groups has a half-decent
>> history, but it doesn't let you access articles from too far back (so
>> it seems.)  It would be nice to read some old articles, as I'm sure a
>> lot of the info I am looking for could be found in such an archive..
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> // CHRIS
> 
>Heh, same here, but I *did* keep my books!  I've actually started, and 
>you may want to look at what I've done so far -
>    	http://webpages.charter.net/greener/AppleCommander/
>
>It's in Java, so you'll need the Java libraries and SWT libraries.  Other 
>than that, it's all GUI, so it may be of interest.
>
>As far as the code goes, I haven't released any of my stuff with source 
>since nobody has expressed an interest.  If you do Java and are 
>interested, let me know (email is on the web site).  The disk and file 
>model is completely separated from the GUI, so it should be quite re-
>usable.
>-Rob

Nice!  

I had to install J2SE 1.4.1, but after that your app works good.

I must admit that my Java is pretty rusty.  I developed a
client/server internet/database/street-mapping application with Java
1.0.2 back a few years ago, but haven't touched it since.  Right now I
mainly use Visual C++, VB on occasion, and am working on VB.NET and C#
now.  I can probably read the code fine, but I'd have to refresh my
Java class knowledge and learn enough of the SWT API to get moving.

As I'm learning the .NET framework, I'd like to write a disk image
organizer and info program using that.  A program somewhat like what
you have done.  I would just make it more like Windows Explorer, where
the left pane lists all the disk images in a particular directory and
the right pane shows the contents.  Looks like you could easily do
that with what you've already got!

I'd love to see the code.. yeah!  And I wouldn't mind helping out if
it's not too difficult to do..  I don't suppose there's any IDE or
debugger for Java?  When I wrote in java years ago, we used Visual
Cafe for an IDE/debugger.  Or maybe Visual Studio.NET (which I have)
will be compatible enough (with Visual J#) to run the code and SWT?

Thanks a lot for the reply!
// CHRIS