01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) (02/17/89)
For those who want to know something about Spectre 128, the following is a brief summary of my experiences with the product (and with Magic Sac). 1. Setting the system up. Unlike Magic Sac, Spectre does not have to be fudged to operate as a Mac under the Hierarchical Filing System (HFS), Mac's zany back- peddle to a real filing system. For those who do not know, the Macs ran under the Macintosh Filing System (MFS) initially. Under MFS, file folders, as displayed on the screen, were just a visual smoke screen for file organization. Files looked like they were in subdirectories when in fact they were all at the root level. For floppy systems this wasn't a problem but for hard disk the system would come to a crawl with >150 files. In addition, Mac when through what seems to be 10,000 versions of its operating system and only one version could be kept on the hard disk at any one time. This caused heartaches for anyone who upgraded to the latest OS and found his old codes would not run. Enter HD20 and the HFS and now hard disks could be set up with a real filing system for disk organization. Enter 128K ROMs with direct HFS support and no need for HD20. Now Mac users could put multiple copies of the OS on their hard disks (they REALLY do this) and could enjoy the benefits of a good filing system. To use HFS under Magic Sac you need HD20 (a very small code) to set up a small hard disk partition (1MByte) running under MFS and a second partition set up as HFS. In effect, you throw away the MFS partition when you work the ST as a MAC. Using these restrictions, I partitioned a 20 Meg drive as 5 Meg = C: for ST and IBM-PC codes (for use with PC_Ditto), 5 Meg = D: for ST applications only, 1 Meg = E: for MFS and 9 Meg = F: for HFS. Originally I had 10 Meg as E: for MFS. While you gain the filing system advantages of HFS you lose the inherent stability of MFS; if you crash a Mac or the ST as a Mac under HFS, there is a GOOD probability you will corrupt the HFS directories. Yep, a crash can blow away the hard disk. This is NOT an ST phenomenon, this is real life Mac stuff! Where I work, we have a long list of Mac users who saw 20 Meg disks go to never- never land (as well as a few Magic Sac users with HFS). I forced crashes on my ST under Magic Sac with MFS (by switching of the system in mid-stream and never once corrupted the disk). Under Spectre, with 128K ROMs directly supporting HFS, I switched back to a single Mac partition on my hard disk (E:) because (i) I did not need to fudge the system with a 1 Meg partition and HD20 and (ii) Spectre would not let me format the old MFS partition to HFS (the manual says that a minimum partition is needed to do this but it does not say what that minimum is). Therefore, I still have my C: and D: partitions for PC and ST work and I have E: for Mac work under HFS. Partitioning is done using Atari's HDX utilities. Formatting one of the partitions (the highest is recommended) as Spectre format is done using Spectre's formatting routines (at this stage your machine is still an ST, not a MAC) Even after you have set up a Spectre partition on your hard disk, you have to boot as a Mac the first time from floppy. This means that you need the Mac's OS (Finder/System) on a Spectre formatted floppy. Therefore, you have to get these files from a Mac disk to a Spectre disk; that's the toughest part of Mac emulation. It involves (i) hooking a Mac and an ST together and transferring the files through a null modem cable, (ii) using a Translator 1 or an equivalent device that reads/writes BOTH Mac and Spectre disks, or (iii) some kind soul gives you a Spectre disk already set-up. Once you boot the ST as a Mac, you can copy the system files over to the hard disk's Spectre partition and boot from HD the next time. What about the poor starving masses without hard disks? Using RAM Start, a public domain code, you can use a 1040ST or a Mega ST as a single drive Mac. RAM Start, on your Spectre boot disk, will automatically install a RAM disk and will copy the system files over to the RAM disk. It also makes the RAM disk the system disk. This last fact is very important! The Mac grew up from a small memory machine that could not accomodate the OS in memory. Therefore, the Mac swaps bits and pieces of the OS in and out of RAM as you load and use an application. If you have a single drive Mac or an ST under Spectre with one floppy, you will get a sore arm as the Mac OS tells you over and over to INSERT SYSTEM DISK - INSERT PROGRAM DISK - INSERT..... With the RAM disk as the system disk you avoid this problem and actually get fast performance since the OS is accessed from RAM and not disk. However, you lose memory to the OS (count on 300K minimum if you want some decent fonts, printer drivers and desk accessories - my system folder is 650K!!!!! and I lose this memory to RAM Start; I have a Mega 2 with a hard drive but I still put the OS in RAM for the improved speed and reduced access to the disk). 2. Using the system Once you boot to being a Mac under Spectre, you have to rely on Mac documentation for 99.9% of what you need to know. The remaining 0.1% derives from having to know how the ST keys are mapped to the Macs keys (ST control = Mac command, ST alternate = Mac option, no function keys and at present no arrow key usage. Worst of all, no HELP and UNDO keys; the Mac does not have these two special keys and you will have to learn key code combos from Mac applications. I purchased EXCEL 1.5 and my supervisor gave me his HYPERCARD (he has a Mac SE but does not want to use HYPERCARD). I also run Red Ryder 7.0 (left over from Magic Sac days - I heard that 10.3 runs under Spectre). With Red Ryder, it is easy to exchange files with Macs by using Kermit and a VAX to move files. For Macs without links to the VAX I have access to a Translator 1 to get files to these Macs. I would like info from Dave Small on the cabling used to hook Mac SCSI drives onto the ST and Mac interchageably to quickly move files around. To give you some idea of the versatility of the system, I had to prepare a bugdet worksheet for the Division I work in. Some users have PCs, some have Macs, others use STs. I made up the sheet with EXCEL under Spectre and then exported a version in LOTUS format. Back in the ST mode, I then moved the LOTUS version to an Atari disk (see 3, moving files, below) formatted to be read by DOS machines. I hiked the sheet into LOTUS and had to do a bit of formatting since LOTUS does not have the font flexiblity of EXCEL and some cells had to be narrowed. Once the file was saved, I read it into LDW, the ST's LOTUS compatible. Now, all users have the sheet. 3. Moving files from Spectre to ST disks The file transfer program, TRANSVERTER, can only handle MFS disks. Therefore, to move a file from the Spectre partition on my HD to the ST partition, I have to (i) have a 400K MFS Spectre disk on hand (ii) transfer files from the Spectre hard disk partition to the MFS disk under Spectre and (iii) move the files from the MFS disk to ST disks using TRANSVERTER in the ST mode. Hopefully, TRANSVERTER will be updated to allow HFS disk access so files can go directly from Spectre to ST partitions on the hard disk. What I would REALLY like to see is the issue of a program that runs under Spectre to access the Atari partitions. Then, when I want to import info to Mac applications, I could do it from ST disks under Spectre rather than use TRANSVERTER, which runs as an ST application.