Now I've just used quite a few words to describe a process that really takes
quite a bit less time to perform than it did to type out the instructions.
I'm sure I made it sound a lot more complicated than it really is. Once
you've done it once or twice it becomes second nature quickly. Don't let my
long-windedness discourage you. I can, on average, use the above process to
make about 6 "real" 5.25" floppies from images in 10 minutes.
The procedure is basically foolproof and the only time it won't work is if
you come across an image that is corrupt (and there are a handful of those
out there).
Let me know if you have further questions. Good luck!
-Nat
Wow. That's an involved way to do it... I just download the disk images on the PC, and then transfer them into the Apple IIe's RAM disk with Kermit (I use gkermit on the PC, which runs Linux, and Kermit65 on the IIe under ProDOS). I have two RAM cards in the IIe, each at 1meg, so I can 'buffer' several disks at once. Once I've transferred over the images, I just reboot the IIe with another ProDOS floppy (RAM disk contents are preserved on soft boots) with a program called DSK2FILE, which can write the .DSK images to floppies.
Most software you'll find is going to be in ShrinkIt archives, same basic process, only I just reboot the machine with a ProDOS disk with ShrinkIt, and use that to extract the archives onto floppies as needed. If it's a Binscii'd file, I just have to load Binscii first (I've got it on the same disk as ShrinkIt), unconvert the file, then load Shrinkit and uncompress it. Shrinkit also has a rather nice file manager, and can even format disks. Wonderful software.
Transferring stuff with Kermit is _extremely_ easy, and pretty fast at 19200 baud. I have the IIe set up to be a terminal on the PC, so I can do all this without leaving the IIe. I can download the disk images from the 'net right from the IIe's keyboard, and then just drop back into a console, invoke gkermit to send the file, escape to the local session of Kermit65 and tell it to receive. Once the transfer finishes, just switch back to communication mode and continue.
If you don't have the RAM disk, you could always just download to a floppy, although full .DSK images won't quite fit on a disk (for obvious reasons). There is a trick to get a few more blocks out of disk to allow an image to fit, although I forget the exact process. It _is_ possible though. I don't have a hard drive or 800k floppy drive, although I'm sure those would work just as well, if not better.
I don't know about doing transfers without the direct RS-232 link though, I would assume all you'd have to do is write the disk images or ShrinkIt archives to an 800k ProDOS floppy with an older Mac, then read the data in on the IIe. I've got a utility to change file types right on the IIe, although I forget the name. Should be easy to find out there though. I can't say as I've ever tried to read a ProDOS disk written on a Mac in a II though. Best stick to Nat's way if you don't want to link the IIe and the PC with an RS-232 cable. <grin>
-Ian
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