Re: Apple //e Dated 1984

Eric wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:01 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The PC CF card reader together with CiderPress makes "full disk"
backup a trivial task you can do in a few minutes.



Ciderpress is great. To partition and format a new card I just use
"dd" to clone an existing card, then I make my changes with Ciderpress
and plug it into the Apple. This is much faster than Ciderpress and it
handles the partitioning and formatting. I guess it might be less
reliable but my testing has been good. Even if it were to screw up it
probably can't damage anything and you can still do it manually.

"dd" originated as a unix utility but there's a nice Windows version
of it here:
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Make 2 batch files, one to copy a card image to a PC file, and the
other to go the other way. Just don't get them confused!

Copy from card to a PC file (if = input, of=output):
dd if=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 of=c:\apple.img bs=1M --size --
progress

Copy from a PC file to the card (just reverse the if and of):
dd of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 if=c:\apple.img bs=1M --size --
progress

These examples assume that you only have 1 hard disk on your PC which
is IDE Harddisk0. So the CF card will be IDE Harddisk1. You should do
a list first to verify this, of course! Look for the size in bytes to
be sure that you have identified the CF card. Partition 0 is the whole
card, and that's all we use for the Apple disks.
dd --list (note: 2 dashes)

I've always formatted in my Apple //e, and have no complaints.
The speed is as fast as I can type! ;-)

When connecting to the CF card with Ciderpress, always connect to the
Physical drive and not the logical Windows drive. These cards do not
have an MSDOS filesystem and you don't want to invite Windows to
format the drive. NOTE: if Windows ever asks if you want to format the
drive you must answer NO!

Good point. It's something you learn to do habitually.

(I keep Autostart turned off for all my drives.)

I'm working on some better documentation for these devices as time
allows. I have not gotton into DOSMaster yet. But I need to do that
next. This is what allows you to have many DOS 3.3 images on one 32
Meg Prodos flash partition. It looks a little complicated, but I'll
document it as I learn. There's an existing document that is a bit
technical and can be hard to understand.

Someone in the CF forum already made a 32 Meg partition with a bunch
of DOS 3.3 images. If you read through the old postings in that forum
you'll learn more.

The CFFA and GSE Reactive Microdrive are highly compatible, and almost
all of the info I've seen on the CFFA also applies to the Microdrive.
In fact, I have yet to see anything that is different aside from the
physical appearance and circuit diagram. One small feature the
Microdrive has over the CFFA is that it can boot to a specified
partition. That's helpful. Otherwise it normally boots to the first 32
Meg partition that is seen as slot 7, Drive 1 (with the CF device in
slot 7).

And the Microdrive uses a partition table, while the CFFA is "hard
partitioned" in one of several switch-selected schemes.

These flash card devices are the single biggest hardware advance in
the past decade (or two). And the emulators are the biggest software
advance, although these don't run on the Apple II.

Agree!

-michael

NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
.

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