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How do Insta-Disks work?


bluejay

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I guess it really doesn't belong here but it's still Apple II stuff so I decided to ask this here. How is that Apple Disk Server can make a disk program into something that flows into the cassette port of the Apple II and write it to a cassette? It just makes me curious how come I can load Zork by cassette. How does this work?

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It's just taking the data from the disk and copying it to a cassette... both are magnetic formats. Just one happens to be arranged in a circle and is non-linear while the other is arranged in a line and is linear. Any program that is purely ROM will work on either (this is why games on systems that used cartridges can't be copied to disk or cassette without special hardware in the drive to make it work, think of those pirate floppy drives for the SNES or Genesis). 

 

Sorry I had to come back and post this since I lost connection as I posted it. 

Edited by DragonGrafx-16
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I'm just impressed with all the timing that must have been involved in setting up the audio. A stock Apple II doesn't have enough memory to hold an entire floppy, so it has to have delays built-in to give it time to write chunks to disk - all without being able to talk back to the disk server and tell it to wait on sending more data.

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