Further instructions for usign ADT / SST below. Email me at: moose AT move DOT to and I can send you the disk image I refer to below. Mike ************************************************************ Apple ][ Disk Transfer Instructions by Moose O'Malley ************************************************************ **************************************************** Table of Contents : **************************************************** - Apple 2 Disk Image Contents - Apple <-> PC Disk Transfers - Some Brief Notes about Disk Image Files - Transferring Standard Floppy Disks : Apple 2 -> PC - Transferring Standard Floppy Disks : PC -> Apple 2 - Standard Floppy Disks Problems ? - Transferring Copy Protected Disks : Apple 2 -> PC - Transferring Copy Protected Disks : PC -> Apple 2 - Copy Protected Disks Problems ? - Conclusion **************************************************** Apple 2 Disk Image Contents **************************************************** Here are the contents of the disk that I use to do my transfers : - SST - Super Saltines Transcopy - ADT : Apple <-> PC Disk Transfer - Copy ][+ v5.0 - Daltons Disk Disintegrator v2.0 - Trackstar 128 File transfer (Only useful if you have an Apple 2 disk drive hooked up to a Trackstar 128 Expansion Card in your PC. i.e. this program is useless for ) - BCOPY v1.5 - Locksmith v4.1 - RENUMBER - DOS BOSS For disk transfer purposes, SST - Super Saltines Transcopy and ADT : Apple <-> PC Disk Transfer are the two programs you need on the Apple 2 computer. **************************************************** Apple <-> PC Disk Transfers **************************************************** The version of ADT on this floppy disk image is ADT v1.21 - so it may or may not work with other versions of ADT or ADT for Windows. ADT is the "Apple Disk Transfer" utility. Paul Guertin developed ADT as a way to transfer 5.25" disk image files from PC directly to diskette on a 64k or larger Apple II and to send 5.25" diskettes to PC where they are saved as .DSK disk image files. A typical ADT setup is an Apple II with a serial card or built-in serial port connected via a NULL modem cable to a PC's COM port with each computer running ADT. ADT can only handle standard Apple ][ floppy disks. i.e. non copy protected disks and disks that don't have strange formats. If you have these types of disks, then you need to use SST - Super Saltines Transcopy. See "Transferring Copy Protected Disks" below for further details. There are various versions of ADT - DOS or Windows - depending on which OS you like. To install ADT on your Apple ][, you type in a command on your Apple ][ (usually IN#2 or similar, see Rubywand's excellent Csa2 FAQs) and hit the send button on the PC (which is running ADT as well), and the PC will send the Apple version down the null modem wire to the Apple ][ - it really is amazing software. Then, you can save ADT to a disk on the Apple ][ and BRUN it, and then you can transfer over the disk image I sent you and then you should then be able to transfer standard and copy protected disks using the software it contains. E.g. SST. For more information about all aspects of disk transfers, including ADT, communications, etc, see Rubywand's excellent Csa2 FAQs : http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2T1TCOM.html and the documentation included with most ADT distributions. For ADT (DOS and Windows) downloads and information : http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/Sel/ADTWin.html It took me a while to set up ADT on my Apple ][ - because I didn't realise that my Apple ][ printer cable was a null modem cable - once I figured this out, I had it transferred in a few seconds. **************************************************** My Apple ][c and Set-Up **************************************************** My Apple ][c has an inbuilt serial port (for driving the printer), and the Apple ][ printer cable is actually a Null Modem cable itself. So, all I do is plug the Apple ][ printer cable into the serial port on the back of my PC and I'm ready to transfer disks. Transferring disks is very easy with the Apple ][c - no need to set baud rates or mess around making cables or trying to get Super Serial Cards to play ball, etc. My ][c also has 2 floppy drives - the internal drive and an external drive - which can save some disk swapping when doing SST transfers. If you are looking to buy an Apple ][ for transferring disks, then I highly recommend that you buy the Apple ][c - but make sure that you get the Apple ][c printer cable as well. I also have a Trackstar 128, but this requires a very slow bus - i.e. a 468 PC or better yet, a 386. **************************************************** Some Brief Notes about Disk Image Files **************************************************** There are several types of Virtual Apple 2 Disk Image file used with Apple 2 emulators, but the main two are DSK and NIB, as follows : Disk Image File Type File Size Extension ----------- --------------- ---------- DSK 143,360 bytes .DSK NIB 232,960 bytes .NIB NIB disk images are 1.625 times the size of DSK disk images, because NIB files also contain the copy protection / formatting information of the original disk. DSK files don't contain this formatting, so these can only be used to contain images of disks from standard Apple DOS disks. So, if the original floppy disk is copy protected, then you need to transfer the disk to the PC using additional steps. If the original disk is not copy protected, then you can transfer the disk to the PC in a single step. Standard floppy disks have formats that are DOS 3.3, ProDOS, Pascal, and others. Normally, you can CATALOG these disks and see a list of files. Copy Protected Disks have strange, non-standard formats, and usually you cannot CATALOG these disks - even if you boot with a standard DOS or ProDOS master disk and then insert the other disk and do the CATALOG. Below I discuss transferring Standard Floppy Disks and Copy Protected Disks between the Apple 2 <-> PC. **************************************************** Transferring Standard Floppy Disks : Apple 2 -> PC **************************************************** *** Work in Progress *** See the ADT help or the CSA2 FAQs **************************************************** Transferring Standard Floppy Disks : PC -> Apple 2 **************************************************** *** Work in Progress *** See the ADT help or the CSA2 FAQs **************************************************** Standard Floppy Disks Problems ? **************************************************** If you have any problems / errors, then check out your original disk and make sure it is fully working. If it contains bad sectors, then there is nothing ADT can do to fix these errors, and your data may not be recoverable. (Try Bag of Tricks or similar programs - you might get lucky, and they may be able to fix your original disk - and then you can transfer it). When floppy disks become old (10-15+ years), then there is a real danger of data loss, bad sectors, and invalid sectors / data on disks because of the ravages of Bit Rot. Unless you have good backups of these disks, then it may be too late and your data / programs may be lost forever. If the disk image does not work after the transfer, and you are sure that your original disk is 100% good and working, then there could have been some sort of corruption or bad sectors on one of the floppy disks on the Apple 2 (something that used to happen with alarming regularity on real Apple 2's), or some sort of corruption in the transfer process, or the disk may be copy protected or it could use a strange format. ADT can only handle standard Apple ][ floppy disks. i.e. non copy protected disks and disks that don't have strange formats. If you have these type of disks, then you need to use SST - Super Saltines Transcopy. See "Transferring Copy Protected Disks" below for further details. **************************************************** Transferring Copy Protected Disks : Apple 2 -> PC **************************************************** Execute SST - Super Saltines Transcopy on the Apple 2 : Select Menu Option 1 - Pirate a Disk Select Menu Option 2 - Pack Enter the Start Track - 0 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Enter the End Track - 34 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Step - 1 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Synchronize Tracks - NO is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Nibble Count - NO is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Now you are told to insert disks, and press . So, place the Copy Protected Disk into Drive 1 on your Apple 2 and a blank DOS 3.3 formatted disk into Drive 2, and press . SST will then read the copy protected disk and write this in packed, transferrable format onto the standard DOS 3.3 disk in Drive 2. Only half of the image of the Copy Protected Disk can fit onto the blank disk in Drive 2, so at the half-way point, SST will ask you to place another blank formatted disk into Drive 2. Do, this, and press and SST will complete the process. Now, you have a 2 standard DOS 3.3 floppy disks that each contain half of a complete image of a Copy Protected Disk. These Disks can then be transferred to the PC for use with emulators using ADT, in exactly the same as we transferred Standard Floppy Disks above. (See "Transferring Standard Floppy Disks" above). On the PC side - where you are running an Apple 2 emulator - you will need to use SST (running on an Apple 2 Emulator) to stitch the 2 halves of the Copy Protected Disk's disk images back together again. Let's say you transfer the 2 standard disks as "d1a.dsk" and "d1b.dsk", we now need to UnPack these disks from within the Apple 2 Emulator on the PC to a special NIB disk image file (you could copy and overwrite an existing NIB file, or else download and use the blank.NIB file from Asimov - I'll assume you have called the NIB file "game.nib" on the PC) : Select Menu Option 1 - Pirate a Disk Select Menu Option 3 - UnPack Select Menu Option 1 - Packed Parms Enter the Start Track - 0 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Enter the End Track - 34 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Step - 1 is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Synchronize Tracks - NO is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Nibble Count - NO is the default - just hit enter to keep this value. Place d1a.dsk in drive 1 and game.nib in drive 2, and hit to make SST proceed. Then, when prompted to "turn over the disk", place d1b.dsk in drive 1 and leave game.nib in drive 2 and hit and SST will finish the process of rebuilding a virtual disk image copy of the original copy protected floppy disk. You should then have a NIB disk image file that contains the copy protection / formatting information of the original disk along with all of the program code / data from this disk, and this disk should now run under emulation just as the original floppy disk runs on a real Apple 2, only it will be considerably faster under emulation. **************************************************** Transferring Copy Protected Disks : PC -> Apple 2 **************************************************** You can reverse the above process to transfer NIB disk images back to real floppy disks on the Apple 2. To do this, you would use SST on the Apple 2 emulator to pack the NIB disk onto two .DSK disk image files, ADT these across onto 2 floppy disks on the real Apple 2, and then use SST on the real Apple 2 to unpack (stitch) these together again onto a single floppy disk. **************************************************** Copy Protected Disks Problems ? **************************************************** If you have any problems / errors, then check out your original disk and make sure it is fully working. If it contains bad sectors, then there is nothing SST can do to fix these errors, and your data may not be recoverable. (Try Bag of Tricks or similar programs - you might get lucky, and they may be able to fix your original disk - and then you can transfer it). When floppy disks become old (10-15+ years), then there is a real danger of data loss, bad sectors, and invalid sectors / data on disks because of the ravages of Bit Rot. Unless you have good backups of these disks, then it may be too late and your data / programs may be lost forever. If the NIB disk does not work after the transfer, and you are sure that your original disk is 100% good and working, then there could have been some sort of corruption or bad sectors on one of the floppy disks on the Apple 2 (something that used to happen with alarming regularity on real Apple 2's), or some sort of corruption in the transfer process. So try again. If the resulting NIB disk still doesn't work, then the problem is most likely because the Copy Protection on the original disk image is more than SST can handle with its default settings, and you may need to adjust some of SST's parameters, or (if that doesn't work), then use some other process to transfer the disk - see below. I have transferred well over 50 Apple 2 disks from the Apple 2 to the PC or from the PC back to the Apple 2, and probably only 5-10 of these were copy protected or had strange formats, but SST handled these disks perfectly every time, and straight ADT transfers handled the rest. I have never heard of SST having problems with fierce / nasty / strange copy protection schemes - it seems to handle everything you can throw at it - but I guess there could be cases where SST just can't handle the protection / formatting of the disk. If SST does not do the job for you, then use some other process to transfer the disk. (Such as a Copy ][+ Option Board, or a TrackStar 128 Card, or enlist the help of someone who is an expert in deprotecting ancient Apple 2 disks or do something else). **************************************************** Conclusion **************************************************** Whatever you do, make sure you do it sooner rather than later. The older your disks become, the higher the chances for errors and data loss. In the late-1990's, I purchased an Apple ][c epecially to transfer all of my existng work from my Apple 2 days way back in 1981/82/83 over to the PC. However, as it turned out, I was too late, and I ended up losing a large number of the earliest programs and work that I had ever written on the Apple 2 because of old disks going bad, and this was very painful and sad. I hope you don't suffer the same fate. ;) Transfer your old disks today ! All the best, Mike "Moose" O'Malley ____________________________________________________ Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996. WEB: http://move.to/moose ____________________________________________________ EOF.