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From: decouty@irisa.fr (Bertrand Decouty)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: The ST, the IBM, and Mac FDHD drives
Message-ID: <1990Oct17.101320.25471@irisa.fr>
Date: 17 Oct 90 10:13:20 GMT
References: <1990Oct11.135121.26348@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <mboen.655719462@peun33> <ob6ANRy00VIAE0gXMZ@andrew.cmu.edu>
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In article <ob6ANRy00VIAE0gXMZ@andrew.cmu.edu> mg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Paul Greelish) writes:
| I write for the alternative newspaper here. When I do my article
| writing, I like to do it at home on my ST. I submit my articles on disk
| to the Mac-using editors because retyping s**ks, and the paper is
| desktop-published.
| 
| How do I do this, you ask?
| 
| Well, since the ST writes disks in (damn close to, but not exactly) IBM
| format, what I need is a Mac that can read IBM (MS-DOS) disks. The new
| Mac SE's and above have FDHD drives that can do this.
| 
| At first I couldn't get the Mac to read the Atari/IBM disk. I did
| everything: 720K format, 360K format, etc. It seems that the Atari
| writes disks just different enough from true IBM format to screw up the
| (very primitive) Apple File Conversion Utility.

You are right: Mac AFE does not read ANYTHING but a 200% IBM format!

| 
| The solution? Format the disk you save your data on on the FDHD-equipped
| Mac. The Apple File Conversion Utility lets you do this, just pop a
| blank disk in and it will ask you if and how to format it. Select MS-DOS
| format, at whatever density your ST can handle.
| 
| This disk will be accepted by the ST, although it will be a little
| different from standard ST format (ex. the Mac will *INSIST* you name
| the disk; this name will appear as a file on the ST desktop (leave it
| alone!))
|

Another solution is to use ibmfmt.tos from Moshe Branner: it works
perfectly well with Mac AFE. Putting a MS-DOS boot sector with DCformat
(3.0) is of no use because DCformat keeps the original size of FAT, which,
on ST is 5 sectors and on IBM is 3 sectors! I think AFE tests this info. 

| I basically translate ASCII text, command codes really screw the
| conversion process up. I go from Word Writer ST (ASCII saves) to
| MacWrite format. Data such as spreadsheet stuff might be possible.
| 
| Anyone with any response/advice/similar situation can email me here at CMU.
| _______________________________________________________________________________
| ______________
| |\    /|
| |  \/  |  ike Greelish
| Carnegie-Mellon U. undergrad
| quote: "CMU is as close to artificial reality as you can get in 1990."
| stupid disclaimer: My opinions are MINE MINE MINE all MINE!!!


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