[Blindapple] new member and reading archives

Jayson Smith jaybird at bluegrasspals.com
Wed Jul 5 03:20:05 EDT 2017 

Hi,

Okay, here's info about how to image disks with a CFFA3000. First, if 
you haven't already, install the card into a slot. Personally I use slot 
1, because that won't mess up the GS startup scan behavior. 5.25 and 3.5 
disks will boot, and the CFFA will only boot if nothing is in any other 
bootable drive. That said, wherever you install the card, that slot 
needs to be set to "Your Card" in the Control Panel.

Next you may need to adjust a dip switch. I'm not sure if this is 
necessary, but if the card doesn't think it's running on an IIgs, it 
probably won't show the desk accessory we're about to use.

With the card installed, and looking at the opposite edge of the card 
than where it connects to the GS slot, around midway from front to back, 
near the very top of the card, there's a block of eight dip switches. 
They are numbered from back to front, 1 through 8. If a switch faces the 
left, it's on, if it faces the right, it's off. You need to turn switch 
7 on. This tells the card to use code intended for an IIgs.

Next, plug a USB thumb drive into the USB port on the front of the card. 
Feel free to use a USB extension and run it out the back of the GS if 
you want, that's what I do so I can easily remove it without having to 
open the GS. Note that the CFFA3000 does support Compact Flash cards, 
but I've only ever used that function to migrate from an old MicroDrive 
CF card to a USB thumb drive. Now close the computer, and boot a 
Textalker-GS disk!

Whenever the disk comes to a stopping point, hit Ctrl+Apple+Escape to 
open the desk accessory menu, hit Down arrow until you hear CFFA3000, 
then hit Return. Now hit 5 to select the Import from Disk option, then 
hit Return. Textalker-GS will say a number. At this point, it wants the 
slot from which you're imaging, so enter that number and press Return. 
Now it wants the drive number, 1 or 2, so enter that and press Return. 
If you're trying to image from a smartport device and there's no disk in 
that drive, it'll beep at this point and return you to the main menu, 
with the correct option still selected so just hit Return to try again 
with entering the slot and drive.

If it finds a disk or you're imaging a 5.25 disk where it can't tell if 
there's a disk in the drive, it'll ask for a filename. It will offer a 
mostly useless suggestion of DISKNNNN where NNNN is a sequence number. 
Hit Delete until it beeps, then type in a new name, maximum of eight 
characters. It will fill in the extension for you, .DSK for 5.25 disks, 
.PO for 3.5 disks.

Now make sure the disk you want to image is in the correct drive and hit 
Return. It should now go about its business imaging the disk. The 
imaging of 5.25 disks is very fast, when it starts it sounds like the 
5.25 drive is booting. 3.5 disks will take longer, but this can be 
decreased somewhat if you have DiversiCache installed.

When it's done, use your Textalker-GS review to look at the screen. Hold 
down Ctrl and hit 7 on the num pad a few times. It should say it 
finished. Keep holding down Ctrl and hit 7 a few more times, if there 
were any bad blocks, it'll tell you.

Now hit Return to return to the main menu. If you want to image another 
disk, you can just hit Return again, since that option is still 
selected. If the new disk is from the same slot and drive, you can hit 
Return twice more, since it remembers the last slot and drive you used. 
Then you'll need to delete the suggested name and enter one of your own, 
insert the disk, hit Return, and away you go again.

When you're done imaging disks, from the main CFFA3000 menu, hit Escape, 
Return, to go back to the desk accessory menu, then Escape, Return again 
to return to whatever program was running.

If you are able to download files from the Internet and get them to a 
Windows machine, a program you will definitely want is CiderPress. It is 
an indispensable tool for managing disk images and files, copying, 
deleting, creating new images, extracting text or Applesoft/Integer 
Basic listings, etc.

Hope this helps,

Jayson

On 7/5/2017 2:38 AM, Tom Brennan wrote:
> Now that I think of it, I have a master disk for the old Franklin 1000 series
> which has some slightly different stuff from Apple's stuff that they did so they
> didn't have as many copyright problems.  Its copy.obj loads differently and its
> intbasic also loads differently.  Also havesome of the old Beagle Brothers stuff
> which was some really nice tools for manipulating things.
>
> Tom
>
>
> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
>
> On Wed, 5 Jul 2017, Tom Brennan wrote:
>
>> nFor simple stuff like workstation I could tell you the crack and just send that
>> on a plain disk and let you modify your init command by changing, for example,
>> a47505 and a48302 r4om 222 to 223 or could send you exec files to make the
>> patches for you.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
>> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
>>
>> On Wed, 5 Jul 2017, Jayson Smith wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Okay, a few more questions. Do you have a USB thumb drive you could fill
>>> with disk images, then mail to me? Do you have a copy of Textalker-GS?
>>> If so, I can definitely show you how to use your CFFA3000 to image
>>> standard format 5.25 and 3.5 disks. By standard format, for 3.5 disks, I
>>> mean 80 tracks, 1600 blocks. For 5.25 disks, I mean 35 tracks, 16
>>> sectors/8 ProDOS blocks per track, no funny business like copy
>>> protection, etc. Like I said, I don't know of a way to read 13-sector
>>> disks, but if you have some stuff on them, there's probably a way.
>>>
>>> Let me know if this would work.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Jayson
>>>
>>> On 7/4/2017 9:31 PM, Tom Brennan wrote:
>>>> I am using da shell through a university but they've blocked zmodem, xmodem,
>>>> ymodem, kermit, and ftp so I really can't upload anything into it.
>>>>
>>>> I have a //gs but somewhere I do have a super serial.  Also have a Laser 128ex.
>>>> Have an old win98 machine and an xp machine but no internet for them.  Have a
>>>> running dos machine but no internet for it.  I'm typing on a Mac right now.  I
>>>> do have a cfa3000 but have never messed with it.
>>>>
>>>> kTom
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
>>>> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 4 Jul 2017, Jayson Smith wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I noticed through the message ID of your message that you're using Pine.
>>>>> Are you using a dial-up shell account? If so, I could probably find a
>>>>> modem somewhere (believe it or not, there are USB modems now) and you
>>>>> could send disk images, archives, etc. directly to me, just as in the
>>>>> olden days, lol!
>>>>>
>>>>> Before I continue, I want to say, please don't be offended by any of the
>>>>> following questions, I truly don't know what type of equipment you have.
>>>>> Do you have a Windows PC or just DOS? Do you have a CFFA3000 on any of
>>>>> your Apples? If not, do any of your Apples have a Super Serial card or a
>>>>> hardware compatible? As I said earlier, the IIc serial ports are
>>>>> compatible, the IIgs ports are not.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would be glad to image disks you send me, but I really don't want to
>>>>> have you send me your only copies of stuff through the mail, just in
>>>>> case something happened to them. You might literally have the only
>>>>> remaining copies of some of this stuff. Do you have enough blank/spare
>>>>> floppy disks that you could make copies of stuff to send to me?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm just trying to figure out a way to get this stuff archived and
>>>>> preserved. The standard Apple 5.25 .dsk image is 140K, 35 tracks, 16
>>>>> sectors. I don't know of a disk image format specific to DOS 3.2
>>>>> 13-sector disks, or any other oddball disk format.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Jayson
>>>>>
>>>>> On 7/4/2017 12:07 AM, Tom Brennan wrote:
>>>>>> Jason, I have an odd situation.  I can't upload any stuff with the isp I'm
>>>>>> using.  If you can read them we can talk about my directly sending you either
>>>>>> 3.5 or 5.25 disks of programs themselves.  Have v3.0 and 3.1 of DOS as well as
>>>>>> several versions of prodos and the gsos Davex version of DOS that APH did.  Also
>>>>>> have pascal, graforth, pilot, cp/m, and several other operating systems for the
>>>>>> Apple.  Even have a version of logo I modified to sort of talk although that's
>>>>>> obviously kind of silly.  Got a lot of that stuff boxed up but can probably dig
>>>>>> it out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If anyone's got it, I'm looking for the version of wlrd.talk that was written
>>>>>> for the pc.  Have I think v3.1 for the Apple but would really like to have the
>>>>>> pc version.  Used to have it but it seems to have gotten lost.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tom
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
>>>>>> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, 3 Jul 2017, Jayson Smith wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would love, love, love to get my hands on images of software you have,
>>>>>>> as you probably have some treasures. I hope this can happen somehow,
>>>>>>> sometime.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jayson
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 7/3/2017 4:02 PM, Tom Brennan wrote:
>>>>>>>> Welcome to the list, Jeff.  I fondly remember the magazine and still have
>>>>>>>> several of its disks along with lots of programs that came from it.  Still run
>>>>>>>> that stuff on my Apple and Laser computers.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Tom
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
>>>>>>>> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Mon, 3 Jul 2017, Jeff Weiss wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>>> My name is Jeff Weiss and I just joined the blind apple list.
>>>>>>>>> I used to publish a disk magazine for blind Apple users originally called
>>>>>>>>> Apple Talk.
>>>>>>>>> Due to a problem with licensing Dos for the magazine, I later changed the name to
>>>>>>>>> A-Talk.
>>>>>>>>> First, how do I read the archives?  I downloaded some files that end with .gz.  I guess this is some type of zip file, but where can I get the program to unzip the files?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> My next question is how do most of you boot your apple disks on the pc?  I have started launching mine with batch files, which makes the process much easier than typing out the entire launch commands.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Also, I think Jason said that there are additional disk images available.  Are they available for download, or directly from Jason?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> That's enough for now, and I look forward to comments from other list members.
>>>>>>>>> Jeff Weiss
>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>
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