• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

How to "copy that floppy"

S

stroupnp

New Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2013
Messages
5
Hello fellow Apple enthusiasts,

I am trying to recover a game for apple //e that is quite rare and of course, in order to preserve the integrity of the disk, I want to make a copy. I have a ProDos disk, the disk in question, and a working apple //e (with two disk drives) but not much other than that. Can someone help me figure out how to:

1) Make a copy of the disk with my current resources (or tell me what resources I need)

2) How to edit hex code stored within a data disk

Thank you in advance. Obviously from my question, I will need very basic instructions for the antiquated methodologies, though regarding technical information in general, I'm quite well-versed.
 
I can point you in the right direction, but hopefully someone here can give you more technical advice. I believe the current and best way to Copy that Floppy™ is to use ADTPro. You can use it to make an archival copy direct to a computer as a .dsk Disk Image file. This file can then be either read into a an emulator and used on a modern PC, or, written back to a floppy and used on your actual Apple //e. :)

What you'll need is a PC with Linux, Windows, or OS X, and a serial cable to go between your Apple //e and the PC. You first Boot Strap the Apple //e into DOS over the serial cable using ADTPro, then you load up ADTPro (from here I find it easiest to write a copy of ADTPro to floppy so you can skip having to Boot Strap over the serial cable.)

Now you can use ADTPro for the aforementioned copying. :)


As for HEX editing, I'm not too familiar with that. I think that after writing to a .dsk, there are several utilities that will allow you to extract or maybe even write directly to files inside the disk image. You could then use your favorite HEX editor.
 
Ok - I have heard of ADTPro before, and I am willing to give it a shot. Can you maybe give me a link to the exact type of serial cable I would need for this with a Windows-based machine? Also, how would I go about "boot strapping" the Apple //e into Dos? Is it part of the ADTPro program?

I am sure this is well-treaded ground given the number of apple //e disks that are in .dsk format out there. Can you point me in the right direction?

olePigeon said:
I can point you in the right direction, but hopefully someone here can give you more technical advice. I believe the current and best way to Copy that Floppy™ is to use ADTPro. You can use it to make an archival copy direct to a computer as a .dsk Disk Image file. This file can then be either read into a an emulator and used on a modern PC, or, written back to a floppy and used on your actual Apple //e. :)

What you'll need is a PC with Linux, Windows, or OS X, and a serial cable to go between your Apple //e and the PC. You first Boot Strap the Apple //e into DOS over the serial cable using ADTPro, then you load up ADTPro (from here I find it easiest to write a copy of ADTPro to floppy so you can skip having to Boot Strap over the serial cable.)

Now you can use ADTPro for the aforementioned copying. :)


As for HEX editing, I'm not too familiar with that. I think that after writing to a .dsk, there are several utilities that will allow you to extract or maybe even write directly to files inside the disk image. You could then use your favorite HEX editor.
Click to expand...
 
What he said. And, yes, DOS (or is it ProDOS?) is included with ADTPro. Just make sure you follow the directions very carefully. I was banging my head as to why it wasn't working when I first tried it, and I somehow missed the entire part about Boot Strapping the Apple II first, then loading ADTPro.
 
If your game/floppy is protected though, you might not be able to get an image of it (c.f. http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?34710-Create-disk-images-from-copy-protected-AppleIIe-disks).

ADTPro will still be useful to you though, because you can then get copy software such as LockSmith or Copy II+ to get your game on another floppy that you can hex edit without fearing you're messing with your original floppy (you could then even mail a copy to some members of this forum who would be able to create a disk image out of it).

You'll need extra floppies too :)
 
I'm looking at using ADT pro as well but there seems to be different null modem cables out there.The manual.txt describes one way of connecting the 9 pin PC serial to the 25 pin super serial card but on the sourceforge page it lists an entirely different set of connections.Looking on the net there are various null modem cables that can be bought but they seem to have a different configuration again.
 
Lurch666 said:
I'm looking at using ADT pro as well but there seems to be different null modem cables out there.The manual.txt describes one way of connecting the 9 pin PC serial to the 25 pin super serial card but on the sourceforge page it lists an entirely different set of connections.Looking on the net there are various null modem cables that can be bought but they seem to have a different configuration again.
Click to expand...
If you want it to work... use the pinout listed on the ADTPro serial page:
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/connectionsserial.html
Quite a bit of research and testing went into the working pinouts listed there. It is true there are a lot of different possible null modem cables. But if you want one that actually works...
 
Thanks for the reply.Didn't want to try this without knowing that I had a correct cable for fear of damaging something.
I have a PAL apple ][e (1982) and fre(0) shows I have 48k memory.ADTPro says that I need 64k.I have a 64k\80 column card plugged into the aux (slot 3) and can get it to go 80 column by typing pr#3 but it still shows 48k.Is there something else I need to do or is the extra memory hidden from basic?
 
That extra memory is not visible to BASIC. If you have any IIe, it has 64k of memory. If you also have a 64k/80 column card, then it has 128k.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top