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From: wack@ee.udel.edu (214 Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: UniDos and SoundSmith questions
Keywords: HardDrive, usage, utilization
Message-ID: <26402@nigel.udel.EDU>
Date: 2 Aug 90 01:16:43 GMT
References: <603@servio.UUCP>
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Reply-To: wack@ee.udel.edu (Andrew Wack)
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In article <603@servio.UUCP> dalel@servio.UUCP (Dale LaFountain) writes:
>Ok.  Two questions:
>
>1)  I have heard good things about UniDos, but I am interested in using Dos3.3
>with my new Prodos only HD (it's a PowerDrive w/ a Quantum 105meg drive). Can
>UniDos be used to make "normal" Dos 3.3 partitions, or can it only be used
>from a 3.5 disk?  I'm getting really tired of hauling all those 5.25" disks
>to college and back with me. :-) 
>

Well, sorry, I only have an answer to your first question :-)

I believe UniDos divides up a 3.5 disk into two 400K disks formatting them
as DOS 3.3, including the boot tracks.  This pretty well precludes using
it on a hard drive.  (I'm not 100% sure that it works this way, but its my
best guess, as its how I patched DOS 3.3 when I first got my GS, except I
used 7 partitions).

However, depending on your needs I may have the program you are looking for.
I wrote a program about 6 months ago to package up a DOS 3.3 5.25 disk as
a S16 file.  These can be stored on any prodos volume, and started from
the finder, a shell, etc.  The only problem is you can't write to this 
5.25 (well you can, but the changes never make it back to the actual file.
Think of it as writing to a /ram disk and never copying it back to permanent
storage), and you have to reboot when you are done (since DOS 3.3 wants 
control over all of bank 0 of memory, overwriting part of GS/OS).

I think I could make it do writes, and even quit nicely back to GS/OS, but
I didn't have enough time, its kind of sloppy  (I'm still using the P16 
interface because I can't afford to buy the new manuals), the ORCA/C compiler 
was driving me nuts (when the H**L is 1.1 coming out?  I keep hearing that 
its here, but they haven't sent me my copy!  Anyone else get theirs?), and I 
didn't think there was any interest.

If there is enough interest I could probably package the current version
up as an alpha release, and make it work as a desktop application (currently
it runs in the text environment)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Wack                              Gravitation cannot be held responsible
Internet : wack@udel.edu          for people falling in love -- Albert Einstein