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From: kadickey@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kent Andrew Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Downloading IIGS S/W on mac
Message-ID: <5817@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 30 Jan 91 22:53:50 GMT
References: <9101290257.AA18909@apple.com>
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Lines: 34

In article <9101290257.AA18909@apple.com> STEIN@UCONNVM.BITNET writes:

>  You shouldn't have any trouble downloading Apple II software onto a
>Mac before transferring it to a GS.  Most software is run through ShrinkIt
>and then Binscii before uploading.  You can download normally to a Mac,
>transfer it to a Prodos disk using Apple File Exchange, and then put it
>on your real computer and run it through Binscii and then ShrinkIt just
>as you would have to anyway if you had downloaded directly to your GS.

NO!  Don't use Apple File Exchange!  It's horribly slow!  (When writing
to a ProDOS disk, it accesses the bitmap blocks FOR EVERY BLOCK IT
WRITES!  ARRRGGGHH!)

Instead, I've had the best (and fastest) results in using either HFSLINK
by Scott Blackman (I think it's up to beta version 5 now) or A2FX by
Chan Wilson.  They both work very quickly.  I personally like the
interface of HFSLINK better, but A2FX is nice also.

Both of these programs run on the //gs and read from Mac HFS disks.
I've had some trouble with binary files with HFSLINK (I didn't track
down where the problem was exactly--the files may have been corrupted to
begin with), but BINSCIIed files always transfer perfectly.  I combine
this set-up with GSCII+ to unBINSCII all the files.  This set-up has
made more than one Mac user drool.  (BinHex, the rough equivalent of
BINSCII for the Mac, requires all the headers to be stripped off, and
for all the parts to be in the proper order.  It also can't do multiple
files at once.  In addition, StuffIt on the Mac is about 2-3 times
slower than ShrinkIt.  Face it--Mac's suck.  :-)

Now, all I need is FTP for my //gs over AppleTalk, and I blow away the
downloading capabilities of the Mac.  :-)

Kent Dickey
kadickey@phoenix.Princeton.EDU