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From: nicholaA@batman.moravian.EDU (Andy Nicholas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: A Note to Beagle Bros.
Message-ID: <666@batman.moravian.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 89 01:27:38 GMT
References: <1937063@mtsg.ubc.ca>
Organization: Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 51

*** Please do not take this as a flame, it is not ***

In article <1937063@mtsg.ubc.ca>, Les_Ferch@MTSG.UBC.CA writes:

> 4. Your BBS should have stated that XMODEM is the protocol being
> used, so we don't have to guess at our ends.  Better yet, would be
> to provide ZMODEM protocol, as one can only get about 60% efficiency
> with XMODEM, but ZMODEM provides 80-90% efficiency.

pro-beagle is run by ProLine.  ProLine currently does not now, nor is
it likely in the future to, provide ZMODEM as long as it can run on Apple
IIe's.  I certainly not an authority on this subject as I've never seriously
considered the feasibility of implementing ZMODEM, but I've been told many
times by Mrogan Davis, the developer of ProLine, that attempting such
would be a horrendous task, if not impossible.

The best ProLine will probably do is Ymodem and 4modem support, but not ZMODEM
only due to its sheer complexity of design.

Morgan Davis and Don Elton can probably comment on this far better than I
could ever hope to...

> 7. Many people do not have 5.25" drives anymore.  The archives of
> ProDOS stuff should be Shrinkit FILE archives instead of whole disk
> archives.  I was forced to use a friend's Apple II to dearchive
> because my IIgs *only* has a 3.5" drive and a hard drive.

I may not know much about ZMODEM, but I do know what shrinkit is and is not
capable of doing. 

If you attempt to unshrink a 5.25" disk onto a 3.5" drive, shrinkit will fix
the bitmap and block count so that the disk you unpacked becomes a perfectly
proper 3.5" ProDOS disk.  Most people have one or the other types of
drives (3.5" or 5.25"), so I don't think it unreasonable to put ProDOS
files on a 5.25" disk.  Packing file-by-file is usually far preferable to
packing by the whole disk, but it's not something that's essential due
to issues of "I have this type of disk drive and you do not..."

In short, you weren't forced to do anything.  That feature has been included
with ShrinkIt since about version 1.0 (since like March or April of this year),
so unless you're using version 0.95 or earlier (please, no!) then everything
should have been just peachy for you.

Read the documentation.  It's been documented there since version 1.0

andy

-- 
Andy Nicholas             GEnie, AM-Online: shrinkit
Box 435, Moravian College       CompuServe: 70771,2615
Bethlehem, PA  18018              InterNET: shrinkit@moravian.edu