Re: UniPlus UNIX: oops...

-jeffB wrote:
> Hmm... how am I going to get Disk Copy 4.2 onto the Mac II, which has
> no Ethernet, from a MacBook that has no floppy or AppleTalk? I guess
> the 8600 could write a floppy that the Mac II's SuperDrive (remember
> dual-floppy systems?) could read. This is getting more
> complicated... but not unworkable.
>
> I just hope the Uniplus copy-control system doesn't rely on holes
> burned in the disk, or something equally repulsive and hard to emulate.
>

Hi Jeff, the 8600 should have a "superdrive" floppy mechanism, at least according to Apple it does.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=46007

It doesn't much matter what OS you run on this, whether it's 8.x or 6.x. As long as you can get a path from the 8600 to either the internet (fetch ftp client, etc.) or another machine, even a PC, you can use it to make disk images. Ideally if you have the ethernet AAUI plug for your 8600 and the appropriate TCP/IP software, you can either connect the 8600 to another machine via a crossover cable, or to your router, etc.

You can find a copy of Disk Copy 4.2 here: http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/ though you might need something like StuffIt Expander to undo the MacBin II header on it if you don't use the 8600 to download it (i.e. if you download it on a PC and move it to the 8600)

Please do not use anything else, especially not the newversion of Disk Copy (i.e. 6.x). DART will work, but it's less compatible with some PPC Mac's, (also it stores its checksums in a resource fork, so this makes it less safe to transfer DART images through a PC unless you use StuffIt to compress them, etc.) Disk Copy 4.2 imges can be stripped of their resource forks when they're transfered through PC's and back to other Mac's (you'll need to reset the type/creator flags, but they'll be just fine otherwise.)

So the best bet is always Disk Copy 4.2 and nothing else.

There was an old program called CopyIIMac which worked on much older machines such as Mac +'s and SE's. I don't know if I have this anywhere, but this would be able to copy copy protected software (well, not things with punched holes). The Lisa's floppy disk controller is capable of formatting/reading/writing tracks at the wrong speed with the right commands, but I've never encountered any software that did this, UniPlus might be the first, then again, maybe it doesn't have any real copy protection and just uses serialization. I guess we'll soon find out. :-)

Once you have the images made, transporting them:

You could also use 1.44M floppies as a means to transfer the images you've made with Disk Copy 4.2 to another machine. (Format the 1.44M floppy as FAT feed them to a PC, if you still have one with a floppy drive.) If your 8600 has an external working CD burner, you could use that as a transport (burn as ISO9660), etc. Looks like some 8600's also had zip drives built in, that's an option as long as you have one on your more modern machine.

Alternate transports are running ZTerm on the 8600 and another appropriate terminal program on another machine - windows hyperterminal will work, minicom on unix machines, etc.) Use a null-modem cable with full hardware handshaking is required for this, but if you lower the bps rate enough, even non-hw-handshaking cables will work. Ideally, going over ethernet is best.

Duplicating the profile:

Andrew mentioned making a copy of the profile using the unix dd command. If you've got uniplus installed on the profile, and not MacWorks or LOS, and a db25 hardware handshaking null modem, you can do that also, but you'll need some sort of unix on the other end. i.e. linux or something else that can capture the output. You're better off encoding this with something first, such as uuencode (provided that uniplus has this).

i.e. assuming that /dev/pf0 is the device your profile is mounted as (and not the partition, but rather the whole drive) and /dev/ttya is serial port a:
You'd run this on uniplus: dd if=/dev/pf0 | compress | uuencode >/dev/ttya

and this on the other machine (assuming /dev/cua is the serial port on the linux machine): dd if=/dev/cua of=uniplus.profile.Z.uue

Unfortunately the above can fail due to various issues with the serial ports (too slow a cpu, line noise, etc.) I've no idea how to tell uniplus to set the serial port to use hw handshaking or set the baud rate, but likely it's some invocation of the stty command. You'd need to do the same on the PC end.

(In terms of the ebay auction, you could always state that you'll ship the floppies for uniplus later and send them in a second batch.)

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