Using Removable Disks by Ryan Suenaga (The Lamp 12/98)

This article is reprinted with permission from the December 1998 issue of The Lamp. The Lamp is a monthly newsletter focused on the Apple II platform and free to registered Delphi users (premium account required). Backissues are available to everyone. Many thanks to Ryan Suenaga for providing this information!

As more and more Apple IIgs users also become PowerMacintosh users and discover the revolutionary Apple IIgs emulator known as Bernie ][ The Rescue, the need to be able to exchange data between the two platforms becomes more and more apparent. In this article, we examine how to use some popular hardware and software--the RamFAST, Iomega Zip Drive, and the Macintosh programs Hard Disk Toolkit, Disk Copy and SCSI Probe--to move your IIgs hard drive partitions over to your Mac so Bernie can bark.

This article assumes understanding of the concept of disk images, particularly _Disk Copy_ images. Please consult the documentation for Disk Copy if you need a primer on disk images.

The relevant hardware this method was tested on is as follows:

- On the Apple II side of things:
  - ROM_3 Apple IIgs, 5 mb of RAM, 9/32 ZipGSX accelerator, Revision B
  - RamFAST, 170 mb hard drive, and Iomega Zip Drive.
- On the Macintosh side of things:
  - PowerBook 1400cs, 44 mb of RAM, 750 mb hard drive, and Iomega Zip Drive.

NOTE: These methods have not been tried with other hardware or software, including the popular Apple brand SCSI cards.

| Collect Information on Apple IIgs Volumes The first thing to do is find out how large your hard drive partitions on the IIgs are. You can get a rough idea by using the command-I keystroke in the IIgs Finder, but the best way is to enter the RamFAST UTIlities (aka RAMFAST.SYSTEM), hit command-U to enter the SCSI Utilities, and select which drive you are interested in (if you have more than one drive). Your SCSI drive's partitions will be listed for you with the volume size next to it. If you created partitions of the maximum size allowed by the RamFAST for a ProDOS partition, they will be listed as having a volume size of 32768k, if not the partitions will be of varied (smaller) sizes. You'll want to jot these numbers down.
| Start Hard Disk Toolkit Next, using the Mac, fire up Hard Disk Toolkit (or some other utility which allows you to format and partition a Zip Disk). You'll want to partition the Zip Disk to have partition sizes exactly the same as the RamFAST partitions, meaning if your RamFAST partitions are 32768k, you want the Zip Disk partitioned by the Mac to also have a partition size of 32768k. It is now time to move this Zip Disk over to your IIgs.
| Mount Disk On The Apple IIgs Given that you are in the IIgs Finder, simply unmount (drag to the Trash) the Zip Disk from your Mac and insert the Zip Disk into the Zip Drive attached to your IIgs and RamFAST. It is likely you will see an alert box with an error message similar to the following: Using the installed File System Translators, GS/OS does not recognize this disk (in device .CVTECH.S7.G). Do you want to intialize it? giving you a choice of initializing or ejecting the disk. Don't panic. Simply hit return (you will probably need to do it twice) to eject the offending partitions. What is happening here is the RamFAST is detecting a partition that the Mac needs to mount the Zip Disk on its desktop. You do not want to initialize the partition.
| Copy Data You will end up with the partitions you sized (to 32768K or other size of your choice) being mounted on your IIgs desktop. If you have sized your Zip Disk partitions to be exactly the same size as your IIgs hard drive partitions, you can now simply do volume copies of your IIgs hard drive partitions to your Zip Disk partitions (if not, you will have to do the slower file copy).
| Back On The Mac Following the completion of the copy, drag the Zip Disk partitions to the IIgs Finder's Trash, eject the disk, then insert it into the Mac's Zip Drive. You may need to use SCSI Probe or an equivalent to mount the ProDOS partitions (Note: you must have PC Exchange, File Exchange, or some other program installed on your Mac that will allow mounting ProDOS disks, and be aware that you must have File Sharing on your Mac turned off to mount ProDOS disks in Mac OS 8 and later). You can now use Disk Copy to make disk image files out of your partitions, and mount them directly when using Bernie.
| Done! You now have the knowledge necessary to transfer all of your RamFAST's hard drive partitions over to your Mac while running Bernie. With a little ingenuity, I'm sure you can figure out how to use the methods detailed in this article to also transfer your data back the other way. We will continue to look at how you can bridge the gap between your real and virtual Apple II in future issues.