[Blindapple] (no subject)

[Tony Baechler]

Hi.  Pascal programs are only usable with the Pascal OS.  Pascal text files 
can be read by DOS 3.3 with special utilities but not natively.  CiderPress 
does an excellent job of displaying Pascal text files.  Pascal uses a 
different text file format from DOS 3.3.  In theory, using something like 
CP, it would be possible to convert Pascal programs to ProDOS since they 
use very similar volume and directory structures.  Another thing which I 
found interesting is to look at the Apple III disks under CP and compare 
them to the Apple Pascal disks.  Both have similar dates, ranging from 
1979-81 and both are very similar in file and directory layout.  As you 
probably know, the Apple III OS later turned into ProDOS but with 
changes.  Apparently the Apple III had a built-in serial port and sound 
card based on the included drivers.

For those who have not heard of CiderPress, it is an outstanding program 
for manipulating Apple disk images and archives.  It is shareware but is 
only $9.95 US to register.  It is from the same author as Nulib2 and uses 
the same libraries.  Look at these links if you're interested.  It is a 
Windows GUI program and is extremely accessible.  I had no problem 
disassembling various versions of Textalker from disk images I have.  The 
first link is to Nulib2 which is a command line Apple archive extractor, 
the second is for CiderPress itself.

http://www.nulib.com/
http://faddensoft.com/