Re: GS with a CD-Rom

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Paul H. Lee <earnhardtfanpl@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I am wondering if I get a CD-Rom drive for my GS, what I could do with
> it.  How do I get files onto a CD that the GS can read?  I do not own
> a MAC, just a PC with a burner.

GS/OS should be able to read files from a single session ISO level 1 CD.
I have no idea how it would handle a multisession CD (assuming a new
enough drive which supports multisession - the 1x Apple drives don't).

The main hassle is filename limitations - ISO level 1 has very strict
8.3 name format (with even fewer characters than MS-DOS).

If you are wanting to archive files from the IIgs, a better option would
be to write a single session CD which contains multiple ProDOS
partitions.  Doing this is rather tricky - the best way I know of is to
set up an appropriately sized SCSI hard drive with the right number of
partitions, copy all the files to it, and then burn it to a CD using a
SCSI device copy operation.  This was typically done on a Mac, but you
could do it on a PC given SCSI support (it doesn't need to understand
ProDOS, just be able to do block-level copies).

The hard drive should preferably be no larger than 650 MB, but I expect
that a larger one would work as long as you left sufficient free space
on the end of the drive.

Yet another option would be to write an HFS CD, which could only be
accessed from GS/OS, or a mixed HFS and ProDOS CD (using the device copy
technique).

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz