Re: DOS 3.2 woes

[russotto@grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto)]

In article <f4f61de8.0203261404.1bd02afb@posting.google.com>,
Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@coli.uni-sb.de> wrote:
>Hi all of you, another stupid question.
>
>I found DOS 3.2 (sic) system disks in Asimov as .NIB images - they
>work fine in an Emulator (Of course you need to preboot DOS 3.3 and
>run BOOT13), however I have not managed to transfer them to a real
>Apple.
>
>The SST method of transfering non-standard disks FROM an Apple doesn't
>seem to be reversible, probably because the track length of .NIB
>images is higher than it is on real Apple disks.

Actually, it's largely because the self-sync nybbles get lost.  If you
analyze the track and figure out where the self-sync nybbles are (not
easy in some copy protection schemes), you can probably re-write the
track.  Just be sure to start in the longest gap; that way the stuff you
overwrite if the track is too long won't be important.

If you know it is DOS 3.2, no need to guess; just write out a long
gap (all self-sync), an address field, a short gap, a data field, a long
gap, etc.  This assumes you have a program which can do such things.

There were many "tricks" to read and write both sorts of disks, most of
them involving using the DOS 3.2 RWTS.  Get it onto a DOS 3.3 disk
somehow then load it into memory and call it.  I believe there was a
program called "Super IOB" which could switch RWTSs around like that.
If you find that, you could sector-copy the DOS 3.2 Master NIB image onto a DOS
3.3 image, convert that image to a real disk, then use the Super IOB
program to initialize a new DOS 3.2 disk and sector-copy the
DOS 3.3. version of the DOS 3.2 Master image onto the DOS 3.2 disk.
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                mrussotto@speakeasy.net
===== 
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