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Apple II Disk Image Related Things


potatohead

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I wanted to use my Apple as a simple VT100 type terminal for various Propeller related things. I remembered Pro Term way back when, and it was a very solid product, employing then modern GUI type interaction. Interestingly, that interaction is familiar even now, tab, space, arrows doing what a modern Windows computer would do. Funny that. Really, some of the tools I needed to get Pro Term onto a 5.25" disk are handy for a lot of other things, and might not be obvious, so...

 

Here is what I did:

 

The Pro Term archive is a Shrink It archive. For that, you want Cider Press, which I have attached here. It can be obtained from Source Forge too.

 

Cider Press can do lots of great things. Convert disk images, open archives, and most importantly, manipulate the contents of disk images, and create new ones. Pro Term can be started on 5 1/4" disks, which is what I have, but you've got to build your own disk images from the 3.5" disk archive. Neat.

 

The Pro Term disk archive can be found at the links below. Not attached, because I think it just needs to live where it lives. It's freeware, with the request that it be sourced from specific places.

 

http://lostclassics....rec_A2-PT31.pdf (The manual describing what needs to be on your 5.25" disks)

 

, and

 

http://lostclassics....PT31A2GM2K9.SHK (The software archive you need to work from)

 

You also will want ADT, found at:

 

http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/

 

What I did was download ADT and follow the bootstrapping instructions for my machine. I've got a //e with Super Serial, so it was easy. You can use just about anything the Apple can do to transfer disk images. Damn cool.

 

The ADT software is just a directory with a batch file to launch, and it contains a "disks" sub-directory. I downloaded the Pro Term archive, some games I wanted to play again, and the PDF documentation into that directory. When you transfer a file to the Apple, ADT looks here first. Nice to just have it all in one place. I will very likely organize some, but for now, I just wanted a game or two and the terminal, so this works.

 

Once you have ADT working, and you've tested it with it's own boot disk, a game or two, you are ready to do other things.

 

Run Cider Press, and open the Pro Term archive and use it to create two 5.25" floppy disk images. One is the boot, the other is the program, and I just used one disk, flipping it for each set of files.

 

To make things simple, just assume the Pro Term archive is in your ADT "disks" folder, and then do the following things:

 

1. Open the Shrink It archive. It will look like this:

 

blogentry-4836-0-41486600-1317530850_thumb.jpg

 

The file selected is important in the steps below. Note it.

 

2. Select the files needed for the boot disk image. Then choose, "Actions", "Convert To Disk Image". It will ask you for a disk name, use "PT3" for both disks, and a file name. I used, "PT3-boot.po" ".po" = Pro Dos Ordered Disk Image. Use the step 3 screen shot to see which files you need to select here.

 

3. Open up that disk image. It should look like this.

 

blogentry-4836-0-48956100-1317530759_thumb.jpg

 

You are done with this disk. It should boot in your Apple just fine. Test it, if you want to. I did. Just boot ADT, use the Receive function, write the front side of your Pro Term floppy, reset and see if it works.

 

4. Now it's time to create the program disk. This one is tricky. Again, select the files you need to make this disk image, and use the "Convert To Disk Image" function as detailed above. There are two steps to this from what I can tell. Maybe somebody knows better than me. If that's you, please comment.

 

Use the screen shot in step 5 to see which files you need to select here, then write the new disk image. I used "PT3-program.po" for my disk image, and don't forget to name it "PT3", just like the other one.

 

5. Open up that disk image, and it should look like this:

 

blogentry-4836-0-84233400-1317530818_thumb.jpg

 

6. Now fire up another copy of Cider Press, and open your original Pro Term archive file. (shk) You need to select the one file here that has a path name! If you just select it in the step above, it won't get created in a sub-directory like it is supposed to. Select the file, and choose "edit", "copy" off the menus, per the screenie below:

 

blogentry-4836-0-66113700-1317530773_thumb.jpg

 

7. Now return to the running instance of Cider Press that has your Pro Term program disk image open, and select "Paste Special"

 

blogentry-4836-0-02361000-1317530783_thumb.jpg

 

8. And make sure you have the path name option selected:

 

blogentry-4836-0-24867100-1317530802_thumb.jpg

 

9. Your finished Pro Term Program disk image should look like this:

 

blogentry-4836-0-96327200-1317530837_thumb.jpg

 

Close your Cider Press windows. They operate directly on disk images, so there is no "save" operation here. Remember that, and make copies of things. For example, to illustrate this flow, I took my PT3program.po file, copied it to "junk.po", then ran Cider Press on it to re-do the steps above, not wanting to trash the working image I had already completed.

 

10. Boot up ADT again, and use the receive function to create the flip side, "program" disk image to complete your working Pro-Term floppy disk for use on a real Apple //e computer. I don't think this program runs on lower memory machines. 128KB or more is needed, meaning Apple //e enhanced or better. Check the PDF.

 

You might not want Pro Term, then again you might too. That's ok. What is nice to know is how Cider Press does things, and that copy, paste mechanic. Pro Dos has volume names like a PC does, sub-directories, and file permission attributes, among other things. Building disk images may or may not require these things. Some of the good tricks are illustrated here.

 

Here's my running pro-term, fed into a S-video capable capture device to strip the color. For this, I use a custom S-video cable, like a C64 user might use. One RCA is color, the other RCA is luma. Very handy for getting higher resolution captures.

 

blogentry-4836-0-69504300-1317532423_thumb.jpg

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How is the terminal emulation with Proterm? I did this a while back with modem mgr, but I never could get it to work right. Any curses program was pretty much garbled.

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It's sloooow.

 

After some tinkering, I found Pro Term not very good at anything over 1200 baud. Funny though, it can send far more quickly. I've not had emulation problems. It does a good VT100, though it doesn't have the right character set.

 

I see some of the articles out there mentioning Modem Manager. That's on my hit list next.

 

Did you use the right terminal specification on your Unix end of things?

 

For my purposes though, Pro Term works. I don't need a ton of speed, and I can deal with basically NO emulation, if desired. It's my debug data coming from the Propeller. Or, it's my keyboard input, etc...

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