______ GHOST.PRG _____________________________________ 01 Mars 1992 __ Formatter and copier for ALADIN¾, SPECTRE¾ and MACINTOSH¾ diskettes. Author: Miguel SARO NOTICE: The author has placed this programme in the Public Domain in the hope that you will find it useful, but he cannot give any guarantee as to its reliability (in other words use it at your own risk). It was developped using SOZOBON C and GULAM (many thanks to their respective authors). No version number has been assigned to it, simply a creation date it used. The programme is mainly aimed at SPECTRE users who wish to convert files from the now defunct ALADIN format. Although SPECTRE 3.0 (the latest version at the time of writing) allows you to read the old 9- sector 696k ALADIN discs directly under MAC emulation this is only true if your MAC system does not reside on a SPECTRE-format floppy (as is the case for SPECTRE 128 owners without a hard disc). SPECTRE becomes confused between the 9 and 10 sector formats that it has to deal with simultaneously. So ALASPEC (the predecessor to GHOST) was born to convert between the two formats under GEM. The problem of exchanging files between SPECTRE 128 (no GCR capability) and a real MAC, however, still remained. GHOST resolves this by making use of the fact that all MACs with High Density drives (e.g. the MAC Classic, MAC LC, MAC II's etc) can handle discs written using MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) so that MS-DOS discs can be read using Apple File Exchange. It just so happens that if the MFM diskette contains a valid MACINTOSH file structure (MFS or HFS) then it can read and written directly by the MAC. The diskette does however have to be formatted using 9 sectors per track (720k max) with information being successively written on one side and then the other as each track fills up. SPECTRE-format diskettes do no however use this arrangement, they first fill up one side of the diskette and the fill up the other side, as well as having 10 sectors per track (800k max). GHOST converts diskettes between these two formats. Obviously you cannot squeeze a 800k SPECTRE diskette into a 720k MFM diskette, but if the top 160 sectors of the SPECTRE diskette do not contain any useful information nothing will be lost in the conversion. You can usually make sure this is true. Should individual files be too big to be contained on a 720k diskette they can split into two or more smaller ones using something like Stuffit. What follows is a very brief list of the capabilities of GHOST but should be sufficient to use it without any trouble. ____Format Information: Only double-sided MFM diskettes can be handled by GHOST which treats them according to their physical structure rather than their contents: __TYPE___| tracks sectors organisation capacity ALADIN | 79 9 alternating sides 696k (1) MAC_MFM | 80 9 alternating sides 720k ALADIN v3| 80 10 alternating sides 800k SPECTRE | 80 10 successive sides 800k (1) - The first track on each side is reserved for GEM. ____Settings: Drives : A, B(if it exists) Types : ALADIN, Mac_MFM, ALADIN version 3, SPECTRE Capacities : 696k, 720k, 800k. Modes : MFS(Macintosh File System), HFS(Hierarchical File System) ____Operation: Start the programme under GEM in the usual way (it does not use either of the emulators). Click on the various boxes shown in the display window to correspond the the required operation. For "COPY" and "FORMAT & COPY" You have to chose the structure of the source diskette and that required for the destination. The capacity of the destination has to be limited to that of the source. For "FORMAT" You have to chose the structure of the diskette to be formatted as well as its capacity and logical organisation. If you click on the "?" for either of the diskettes it will try to determine the structure of that diskette. If it displays "ALv3_SPct" it means that it cannot tell whether it is an ALADIN version 3 diskette or a SPECTRE diskette. Click on the operation to be perfomed. The programme will never refuse the requested operation, but the result obtained depends on how accurately the settings were chosen. It is possible to copy a SPECTRE 800k diskette to a 696k ALADIN one!! - you will lose the excess and the MAC system will ask you if you want repair the diskette. The programme has dialogues in both English & French (since the author is French): ____To change language: (French/English) While running : click on "Help/Aide" at the top right of the window then on "Continue", on the next screen click on either "Francais" or "English" to chose that one. Click on "Return/Retour" Changing default : while on the second screen described above, clicking on "set default lang." will save the current setting to the programme itself so that it will be this language used when it is next re-started. ___ I wish to thank my friends: Yves LAGARDE for his suggestions after testing and Paul DAGLEISH for the same reason but also for his translation into English of the programma dialogue and this documen- tation (you're welcome - PD :-) ). ___ If you have any comments or wish to contact me please write to me at the following address (I don't have access to the net) : M. SARO Help Informatique 7, rue de Strasbourg 38000 GRENOBLE France.