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14th August 2001

KEN ABOUT ... ANYTHING BUT

Ken Ross

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petlibrary@bigfoot.com


 

NOT ONLY BUT ALSO ..

A recent article about downloading sort of reminded me of the ''intro-to-the-library'' items that Joe Griffin used to write in the Journal. So, here is a version of that.

If you visit http://members.tripod.com/~petlibrary you will find a catalogue of Commodore software I have lurking on real floppies. In addition, there are folders from where you can download the software. On site there's most of the CBM/PET library, all of the 700 series stuff and quite a fair range of COMAL archives, (more to follow ). I do have plans to get the C64 stuff up there as well, (- but it takes time). There is also a small section for the older Mac, with some handy bits in that might be hard to find elsewhere.

The Commodore archives are firstly LYNX'd on native disks to 1541/4040 sized lumps that are then zipped, either on my C128 or on my Mac. For various reasons I decided against using D64 images.

As you may gather from its URL, the site is biased towards CBM/PETs, but it has evolved over the years to cover other machines. Hopefully, the info on the site will prove useful to other Commodore users.

Copies of all the Geos disks have been passed onto 'The geoNut Disk Depository', http://dgelliott.tripod.com /csgeos/index.html, as Dave Elliot is far more capable than I in dealing with Geos disk requests.
(end of public service announcement!)

READ C64 DISKS ON AMIGA

Amiga owners with an Amiga 1020 5.25" disk-drive, (or equivalent), can use "Disk2File" by Ron Menelli to read unprotected Apple 5.25" disks and create a standard disk-image. A 40 track drive is recommended, although 80 track drives are supported. There MAY be problems with drive-speed reading Apple II disks; this can be adjusted by following the instructions appearing in the "1541.doc" file. ("1541" allows Amiga 5.25" drives to read C64 disks). "Disk2File" is included as part of the "Apple2000" emulator package for the Amiga.

PROGRAM LOCATIONS:

ftp://ftp.apple.com/software/aii/lc.iiecard/iie-startup-disk-image.hqx
(the "ProDOS File System" is part of the disk-image - use Disk Copy to extract).

ftp://kreeft.intmed.mcw.edu/Q/pub/apple2/dsk2file/4.0/dsk2file44.shk

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/apple2/faq/part3

ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/a pple2/amiga/Apple2000v13.lha (contains "Disk2File")

ftp//ftp.wustl.edu/ systems/amiga/aminet/misc/emu/1541.lha

AND WHY NOT

Lurking in the Aminet archives, ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/h ard/hack, are the details for creating an interface for using a Mac external 800K floppy drive with an Amiga.

(As yet I've not had the time to build one). There are 2 versions of the file, one of them has an error in the diagram. The other is corrected and states this in the file, so make sure you get the right file before construction.

The component list is very small (2 chips are the major part)

The various versions go under the names of MacInterface.lha, macdrive.lha, MacFloppyPCB.lha, etc.

As you can see from the picture a quick guide as to which drive is which, if you encounter one, is that the 800K case has ridges and the 400K is smooth cased.

SURELY NOT ....

MONICA is a download assistant program for the Mac that allows you to easily set up a download by drag'n'drop or cut'n'paste file URLs. Once a file is received Monica will start downloading the next one, if multiple URLs have been given. If the server times you out, or if the download is incomplete, then MONICA will restart the download and do its best to resume from where the download left off. This makes life a lot better - no more incomplete downloads.

As an example I had to get a 6.5MB file from a server in the USA - (no ftp option, only browser access). Every time it reached 5% it got cut short.

By looking at the fragment on my desktop and checking the info option from the file menu, I found to my delight there was a URL lurking there. I pasted it into Monica and set things in process. It took Monica 22 re-connections to the server to get the file downloaded - which wouldn't have been an option in browsers. (I think icab has a download assistant?)

MONICA can be found at http://www.blackdiamond.co.za /bdmonica.html

TOME RAIDER

Tome - definition - any volume of work of several volumes.

(Editor: The comes from Ken Ross's personal dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a tome as a heavy book or volume, but that would spoil the title of this section!)

Apple does this a lot on their system stuff and then you've got to go through the entire install process just to get a tiny file. What do you do if you've only got the tome itself, without the installer, (or for some reason it won't install)? You need a tome viewing and decompression utility, which is another item that came in very handy indeed recently.

You can FTP it, (750K download), from ftp://ftp.anapraxis.com/mrp/tome viewer-13d3.sit

Tome viewer is going to be put up into the Mac download folder on the Petlibrary site, as are a few other items that have been pending.

SAGES IN THE YELLOW PAGES

A recent query about the availability of a version of the Mac OS, and where it could be got hold of, brings the differences between HTTP and FTP to light. A visit to Apple's web site using HTTP and a browser gets the visitor shown the delights of the latest Quicktime and, gosh wow, a patch for OS X (and whatever suffix it's reached!). For the 68K user there's not really much point going there ....

However using an FTP program, such as "fetch', or even using the browser in FTP mode, a different picture emerges from ftp.info.apple.com, as can be seen from these screen shots.


The upgrades from OS8 to 8.1 and from 8.5 to 8.5.1 are quite reasonable download sizes ... but upgrading from 8.5 to 8.6 requires around 34MB of download time, (as far as I recall). Sad to say there are no legal downloads of OS8 & 8.5. You have to find a place that can sell you the install CD. The main reason for upgrading from 8.5 to 8.6 is that 8.6 supports USB cards in the PowerMacs PCI slots, which gives access to various peripherals.

 ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-British/Macintosh/System/ is one of the folders

 ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Support _Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-British/Macintosh/System/Full_Installs/

 ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_S upport_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-International/Macintosh/System/Full_Installs/
(here can be found the complete system files for OS7 , 7.0.1 and 7.5.3)

 ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Su pport_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-International/Macintosh/System/System_ 6.0.x/ and there's 6.0.8 for the older machines!

Editor's Note: The apparent spaces in the above URLs are underscore.

DISCLAIMER

Perhaps these guys have relatives in Redmond? ;-)
http://enzo.gen.nz/jonfrum /gloss.htm#cargocult


 

 

 

 


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