Introduction

In 1991, I converted Disks 1-3 of The Beagle Bros. Minipix disks to Apple Bsaved screens using the Beagle Bros. Minipix Converter that Came on Disks 2 and 3 ("Read Page 6 in Your Manual").

I then used the Proterm Terminal program and a Null Modem cable to port the Bsaved screens from my Apple ][ to my IBM-PC running the Procomm Plus Communications program.

This was so long ago now, that I forget exactly what other programs that I eventually wrote to convert these to their almost final resting place in their respective "Old PrintShop" Graphics Library. Read Further.

In 2008, I reconstructed Disks 2 and 3 of The Beagle Bros. Minipix disks by using Apple II emulator Disk Images of Minipix Disk 1 as a template, and the "Old PrintShop" Graphics Libraries that I had converted back in 1991. I had long ago lost my original Minipix disks for my real Apple II, and so it seems has the rest of the world. Fortunately for all of us I think, the Disk Image for Disk 1 had survived and was available from a couple of Internet Archives.

To achieve this minor miracle of reconstructive digital surgery I wrote a program called Dat2Mini which reversed the process of so long ago by reading the Minipix graphics from the "Old PrintShop" Graphics Libraries" and creating Apple II BSaved Images in the format used by this particular version of Minipix that I came across which it seems to me is somewhat different from the version that I had originally. However it was close enough!

To complete the reconstructive surgery I then used two different Apple II DiskImage utilities, and some minor editing of the STARTUP program to identify the new disks as Disk 2 and 3 (keeping in mind that I used Disk 1 as a template so these disks were still identified as such).

First I used CiderPress to overwrite the original images with the ones that I had created. Apple II Oasis was unable to do so without running out of room. However, CiderPress scrubbed the file attributes so the disk was unusable until these were restored. This is where Apple II Oasis was used, and I set all the dates back as well as setting the proper attributes. CiderPress was also useful in renaming the volume and file names.

Each DiskImage utility has its own strengths and weaknesses, but by using both and some "sleight of hand" in my own organizing of this little project, I am hard-pressed to tell that these new disks were not produced by the Beagles themselves. So I will represent these as being facsimiles of the originals until the real ones come along (I doubt if anyone would even know the difference if I represented these as originals). And in the meantime, the utility that I wrote (Dat2Mini) can also be used to produce many more disks of Minipix from the many "Old PrintShop" Graphics Libraries that I and others still have available for download from the Internet.