Apple disk -> MSDOS

From: M H Stein <mhstein_at_usa.net>
Date: Wed Jan 9 20:10:40 2002

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>

>No PROBLEM, just impossible.

Ah well, problem solved then.

>> I think with a little software I could transfer it
 to one of my PETs via the cassette port, and from there
 it would be trivial to get to a PC, but I'm hoping
 there's an easier way.

>Really? The PC can't do PET disks, either. But you MIGHT be able to
interface one of the aftermarket IEEE488 drives to the Pet with some
trivial hardware, and then interface it to the PC, and just write a file
system for it.

Well, no, I wasn't thinking disk-to-disk:

>But, if you have a serial port on the Pet, then it'll be easy.

I do; as well as Centronics parallel & a P-S converter.

As a matter of fact, I archive PC BIOS settings this way when setting up
a new system: Plug a P-S converter into the printer port, connect the serial
to a laptop, press PrintScreen on each BIOS page and suck it up on the
laptop; format, print & save.

And speaking of kludges, how's this: I have a client who periodically needs to
get data off the network to a standalone separate computer; trouble is, the
data is only available on an inquiry screen and corporate guidelines do not permit
any foreign S/W on the NT client nor any attachments to the network. So what I did
was connect serial-out of the standalone to a serial to PC keyboard converter,
serial-in to the client serial-out, and direct client printer O/P to the serial port.
The standalone goes through its list of accounts, sends out each account number
and the code to bring up the inquiry screen on the serial port (which the client sees
as keyboard input), waits a second for the screen to come up, sends a code
to print the screen and sucks it back in on the serial port for de-formatting and
storing. Slow and ugly, but kind of elegant in its kludginess...

>Or maybe you could program the cassette port of a 5150?

That did occur to me 'cause I just happen to have one, but I think Altzheimer's
would have taken over by the time THAT project was finished...

>> I have a CompatiCard I and Uniform, and I still have...

>Those will be nice for doing MFM diskettes. No help at all for GCR
(Apple and Commodore).

That's kind of what I gathered from the previous thread; just thought I'd double
check.

>> the T300 that no one wanted which can do 96TPI 640K

>If you DO figure out a use for it, let me know. Somewhere around here are
a few of them. I patched PC-Write to run on it, but never came up with
anything else to do with it. Eventually I gave one to Toshiba's MRI
division, because they couldn't get one throught their main corporation.

Well, it runs dBase II and 123 quite nicely, and I used something called SED for
text editing, but even with those excellent expensive 640K 96TPI diskettes one
does get used to hard disks. Mind you with all the CD-ROM swapping these
days it sometimes seems that we've gone back to the dual-floppy days; thank
goodness there is software to put those CD-ROMs on HD.

Hate to toss it, seems like the 96TPI drives might be useful some day, it
certainly is well built and I happen to have lots of docs, but alas...

You haven't run across the CP/M86 for it by any chance?

- --
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Wed Jan 09 2002 - 20:10:40 GMT