I have used the ADTPRO with audio, serial, formatted and transfered image to actual floppy disk without any problems. Great tool!
What I am still struggeling and cannot find an answer, is how to use a image downloaded from an archive (e.g. PACMAN.DSK) and use it into the VSDRIVE which seems to only allow .po file. I would like to avoid have to buy a huge collection of floppy disks.
I tried the AC.SH convert but still no success.
Am I assuming wrongly that I could use any image with the VSDRIVE utility or do I need to convert to .po but I have not used the correct syntax...
Thank you for your help,
Vince
MaPomme,
VSDRIVE?
Got a picture or pictures?
Steven
Sorry I was not clear, with ADTPRO can use the VDRIVE command to mount an image hosted on the connected PC/MAC. It does come with empty images but I would like to use images downloaded from the internet. The instructions are syaying the can use the provided image of substitute them, however I was never able to substitute them :< That's my question, how to replace the empty image with downloaded images?
"The ADTPro server can host two virtual hard drives to a connected Apple II or /// machine running a driver from the distribution disk, VDRIVE-2.0.0.DSK. This is a different function from the usual disk transfer mechanics of the ADTPro client. With the VDrive driver running on an Apple, you can access images named "Virtual.po" and "Virtual2.po" in the "Disks" folder of the ADTPro server. These disk images can be of whatever size and contents you like; and the connected client will be able to access the contents of that image via slot 2, drives 1 and 2 on an Apple II, and as .VSDRIVE and .VSDRIVE2 devices on an Apple ///.
The ADTPro distribution comes with two 800k virtual files pre-built for you. There's not much on them, as they're intended to give you a little extra storage space and to get used to how the virtual drive system works. You can use them as-is, or you can substitute your own instead. If you would like to make your own blank ones, CiderPress or AppleCommander can do that for you. For example, from the command line where you normally run ADTPro from, you could enter one of these commands, based on your platform...."
That's the key. Whatever your image is, you have to name it "Virtual.po" or "Virtual2.po". But... I don't think you are going to get accomplished what you want to. PACMAN.DSK sounds a lot like a game disk. VSDRIVE will really only work on ProDOS disks, and the serial driver will take some space normally required by a program that would consume the full 64k of a game. So running game disks is not really the use case for VSDRIVE. You might be interested in Virtual Game Server that will run single-load games over the wire - serial or audio:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/a2gameserver/
http://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/readme.html
I did not realize the problem of space (I have a 256Kb ram though).
Thank you vey much,
Vince
You very well may, but that doesn't help a ProDOS driver. In this case, it still has to make use of the main 64k memory map. Plus... a game is probably going to expect DOS, not ProDOS, and it's going to expect it in slot 6.
David, is it possible for you to release a (up-to-date) version of adtpro client for dos 3.3/3.2, not for prodos?
In one sense - that's what the basic ADT (for DOS) is...
http://sourceforge.net/projects/adtpro/files/dos-adt/
It contains a bunch of things having to do with serial hardware compatibility that ADTPro has; bootstrapping capabilities, and so on.
In another sense - it makes no sense, because ADTPro relies on the foundation of ProDOS to do a bunch of what it does. Volume interrogation, devices other than the 140k floppy, ProDOS device drivers, etc. simply aren't possible/relevant in a DOS 3.x world.
The problem is that the basic adt is not compatible for some reason with your (latest?) server...Another useful feature would be a possibility to store disk images on a (sufficiently large) prodos volumes...
I could be wrong, as I have never delved into it myself, but is this something Dos Master attempts to handle?
That's not what I needed.
Are you sure about that? I no longer package them together, that's true. But if you match the baud rates, the latest server should (still) be compatible with essentially any ADT for DOS ever released. If it's not, that's a bug I need to look at.
As BillO notes, this is the dominion of DOS.MASTER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS.MASTER
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/System/DosMaster_docs.txt
DOS MASTER emulates drives. I just want to be able read/write disk images locally that ADTPRO handles...
I am certain that the version you used to bundle with adtpro complains about incompatible host software on a //e machine with SSC (only 115Kbits/sec tested). I keep older server versions and they work. Another bug I found is (maybe this time related to adt24?) when there are several hard to read or bad sectors on a floppy diskette, e.g. with several retries per several (4-5) sectors only in the first portion of tracks that is buffered and then just after reading of these first 7 tracks is finished another error about host is shown. Probably this appears when client is too slow (more than usual) with sending the first batch of tracks to the server. I will check this in some 30 minutes again on different machine(s) this time...
UPDATE: I just tried on a //GS machine and server 2.0.0. The dir command always works as before. The first time image transfer went OK. All next attempts to transfer an image to PC lead to "ERROR: INCOMPATIBLE HOST SOFTWARE" after short FDD motor ON on the apple's side and server showing "Request: ADT from Apple to host". I have to cut the serial connection with server's button and reconnect it again in order to be able to run the DIR command but still no SIMPLE dsk transfer is possible....Maybe this is not related to the server side at all? This error obviously appears from time to time...
About the second and more critical error when slowly reading the first 7 tracks of the diskette - it still appears with server 2.0.0 and this time with the //GS machine as a client. The exact message on the apple's side is "ERROR: NONSENSE FROM HOST. ANY KEY:" while server showing "Request: image from Apple to host"&"Image transfer aborted."
Great, that's a scenario I can try at home and see what's going on.
That sounds about right - if it's taking too long to read, the host will decide the client isn't there any more and reset itself. The old client doesn't have smarts to understand it's being left for dead now, so it'll seem like nonsense to both sides if one remains in death throes. Waiting for fully 1/5 of the disk to come back to potentially bad sector reads before timing out would be cruel to everyone else when timeouts really need to occur... so I'm not sure I can do anything but potentially offer a "wait forever" kind of thing for really bad disks. But one thing to do might be to do a disk-to-disk copy that has good (but blank) sectors for unreadable sectors in the original, then transferring that.
Well, a an increased timeout option in the server would be great. Overwriting the sectors with dummy data is not a good solution. Thanks.
Not really... it would penalize the typical case for an edge case.
Writing a new disk with zeroes where unreadable sectors once were is a reasonable solution and saves time on transfer.
MaPomme,
Do you have any sort of newer Mac (Like a G3,G4, or G5) that you can use to transfer your .dsk files to your USB Drive?
Steven
Well, if you think that adding a parameter or option is that difficult I have to study some javashit debugging and fix that coz I am not going to fiddle with apple sector utilities just to handle a stupid timeout.
I'd like to call you a pompous ass, but that would be being as rude as you, so I won't do that.
How nice. Thank you
Don't mention it
Ok, it could be a language barrier since I am not as fluent as you are in English. But we are computer guys here. We usually think logically and often evaluate computer results in binary logic (e.g. true or false). If one says that somebody is doing stupid thing this does not mean that the person is a fool. Just that in this particular case that person is doing illogical thing(s). And we stress the fact that this particular action is wrong. A stupid person usually makes stupid actions very frequently. If you make other assumptions that's a product of your imagination.
Actually, in English when you tell someone something they did was "stupid" it is a derogatory term, period.
It doesn't mean something else like "Illogical" it just means stupid. They read stupid. They "hear" stupid.
It is most definitely a word that is not used to convey helpful information or used in a "teaching" manner for those of use who don't have an engineering degree.
We are not all "Computer" guys. Some of us only use computers as a hobby and our lives/jobs have absolutely nothing to do with computers.
Zan