The usual story: after a recent revelation about backing up entire PC screenshots using Virtual PC for posterity, I was motivated to dig out my old Apple and save all of my old 5.25" disks for use with emulators before the disks physically decay. What I've got: - Hardware - Laser 128 EX (1-4MHz, 128KB) - WinXP box (~1.8GHz, 512MB) - Null modem cable, all the right adapters. For once. - Software - on the appropriate floppies - ProTerm 2.01 - ShrinkIT 2.1 - ProDOS system disk 1.8 - A single DOS 3.3 disk (apparently I trashed most of my game disks... sigh... oh well, there's Asimov) - Copy II Plus - Perhaps a few other odds-and-ends I was able to create an ADT disk (hence replying to this thread). For others who may search for this situation on Google, I noticed a couple of issues: - To configure your serial port on the Laser, use Ctrl+P+Reset. Very slick UI that I never knew existed when the Laser was my primary machine. I used 19200 8N1 - Hyperterminal sucks - we all know this - and I was never able to get it to work bi-directionally. I took Calthaer's advice and tried Tera Term Pro. This seems to be managing. And the whopper: - For some reason, the monitor (CALL-151 to * prompt, not video monitor) on my Laser handles the following sequences differently than other Apples: CALL -151 800: 1 2 3 4 : 5 6 7 8 This SHOULD put "01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08" into 0800 through 0807 - but it doesn't. The second line vanishes into never-never land, so you end up with "01 02 03 04 00 4C 00 5F" or other such garbage. This makes the ADT.DMP fail even if you get it to transfer. It took a while to notice. I suspect this is what caused an issue reported in 1997 in this posting: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=65ao1d%24iob%241%40hyperion.nitco.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain The fix is to include the memory addresses for each line in ADT.DMP; I whipped up a quick Perl script to add them and everything is happy. Strangely, I can only find that one other report of such an issue. Is it a known problem with the Laser's monitor routines? Anyway, as Calthaer reports, the Laser 128's serial port is not compatible enough with a SSC for ADT to do its trick. Damnit! Okay - now that all of the above is reported to the newgroup for future generations to Google on, and now that I've proved I'm actually trying things out, here's my actual question: =================== Assuming the above setup - a terminal program on the PC and Apple2 capable of basic file transfers (e.g. Kermit, XModem, etc) - what is the most efficient way to transfer disk images to the PC for use in an emulator? ADT sounds ideal - stick in a floppy, hit send, and get a .DSK on the other end. No attendance, no disk flipping. That requires a hardware purchase (a true Super Serial Card) - do-able, but something can always go wrong, and I have not heard of success using a Laser 128 + SSC + ADT - just a hypothesis. The other obvious route is to ShrinkIT disk images (.SDK) on the Apple II, then transfer them to the PC using the terminal programs. The down side of this is the overhead of monitoring - for each transfer, there's the ShrinkIT phase - which I'm assuming requires attendance and disk flipping if compression isn't handy - followed by transferring the .SDK files to the PC, followed by doing a .SDK to .PO conversion on the PC using NuLib. Are there other routes? Is there another software package that will do transfers on the fly? I'm lucky enough (relative to most people who want to embark on this) to have terminal software on the Apple already. =================== Thanks a bunch in advance! It seems you have done some homework. Personally I never had any compatability issues with the laser128 I had. I'll have to try the memory address continuation thing in the monitor program. Currently I have a version 4.2 (Thankx Roy) and (gasp) it too fails the continue entering numbers test. You are not alone. Thankfully you have the answer to the initial problem, include the memory addresses in each line of ADT.DMP. (Catch that Jeff?) I will simply have to try the Laser128 and see for myself about transferring disk images via ADT. It should be compatible... Of course I don't use any term software for the initial transfer, I just null-modem connect and have the TP Type the file to the port. (Type adt.txt >com1) I'll have to see about using a serial card in the expansion slot too. This really bugs me that it failed. (I use a SSC in my IIgs for transferrign becasue the 'modem port' is not compatible on it. (I of course had complete success using the IIc.) More food for thought: Reading Apple II diskettes >directly< on a PC http://www.faqs.org/faqs/apple2/faq/part7/ Emulators/ disk images http://www.zip.com.au/~alexm/faq/ Thankx, Ed Joshua Bell wrote: > And the whopper: > > - For some reason, the monitor (CALL-151 to * prompt, not video monitor) on > my Laser handles the following sequences differently than other Apples: > > CALL -151 > 800: 1 2 3 4 > : 5 6 7 8 > > This SHOULD put "01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08" into 0800 through 0807 - but it > doesn't. The second line vanishes into never-never land, so you end up with > "01 02 03 04 00 4C 00 5F" or other such garbage. This makes the ADT.DMP fail > even if you get it to transfer. It took a while to notice. I suspect this is > what caused an issue reported in 1997 in this posting: > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=65ao1d%24iob%241%40hyperion.nitco.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain > > The fix is to include the memory addresses for each line in ADT.DMP; I > whipped up a quick Perl script to add them and everything is happy. > Strangely, I can only find that one other report of such an issue. Is it a > known problem with the Laser's monitor routines? > > Anyway, as Calthaer reports, the Laser 128's serial port is not compatible > enough with a SSC for ADT to do its trick. Damnit! > > Okay - now that all of the above is reported to the newgroup for future > generations to Google on, and now that I've proved I'm actually trying > things out, here's my actual question: > > =================== > > Assuming the above setup - a terminal program on the PC and Apple2 capable > of basic file transfers (e.g. Kermit, XModem, etc) - what is the most > efficient way to transfer disk images to the PC for use in an emulator? ... >are there other routes? Ed Eastman writes ... > > It seems you have done some homework. Personally I never had any > compatability issues with the laser128 I had. I'll have to try the > memory address continuation thing in the monitor program. Currently I > have a version 4.2 (Thankx Roy) and (gasp) it too fails the continue > entering numbers test. You are not alone. > > Thankfully you have the answer to the initial problem, include the > memory addresses in each line of ADT.DMP. (Catch that Jeff?) > > I will simply have to try the Laser128 and see for myself about > transferring disk images via ADT. It should be compatible... Of course > I don't use any term software for the initial transfer, I just > null-modem connect and have the TP Type the file to the port. (Type > adt.txt >com1) > .... > > > > The fix is to include the memory addresses for each line in ADT.DMP; I > > whipped up a quick Perl script to add them and everything is happy. > > Strangely, I can only find that one other report of such an issue. Is it a > > known problem with the Laser's monitor routines? > > > > Anyway, as Calthaer reports, the Laser 128's serial port is not compatible > > enough with a SSC for ADT to do its trick. Damnit! > > .... Don't know much about the Laser 128. If sending an address at the start of each line helps, sending ADT_ss.dmp (included with Paul Schlyter's ADTcc stuff) may work. It's supposed to be ADT for SSC interfaces and it does send the addresses. Or, just going to ADTcc (for non-SSC interfaces) may work. ADT_cc.dmp also includes the addresses. Both .dmp files have the usual PC LF chars in the end-of-line code; so, you may want to tell Hyperterm or whatever to filter those out. Have reorganized ADT stuff a bit on GS WorldView. Now, practically everything-- Windows and MS-DOS PC programs plus ADT, ADTcc, and ADTgs is included in ADT_2004.zip at http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/Utils/ . Rubywand