-=> DANIEL O'LEARY wrote to STEPHEN ADAMS <=-

 DO> On 04/27/2004 02:12 PM, STEPHEN_ADAMS wrote:

 > LE> My old computer cassette recorder has both line and mike input jacks.
 > LE> But I'm not planning on writing any tapes, just reading ones I've got.
 >
 >Well then, you'd just need to patch your computer cassette recorder line
 >out jack to whatever jack on the Franklin that it uses for loading in
 >cassette tape based programs.
 >
 >If you should find that your Franklin doesn't support the old
"load" and
 >"save" Apple cassette tape commands, you can do a couple of
things to get
 >those old cassettes saved as normal Apple disk based programs.
 >
 >1.  Find someone who does have an Apple ][ or Apple ][+ with disk drives
 >and ask if they would make the conversion for you. I'm not sure if an
 >Apple //e would still have the physcial cassette tape jacks in it, but if
 >it does, add that machine to the list (the Apple //c and IIc+ computers
 >don't have such jacks).
 >
 >2.  If you use either a Macintosh or PC, digitize those cassette tapes
 >into AIF or WAV files. There are a few Apple II emulators available for
 >both platforms that will read these digitized sound files as cassette tape
 >input. From there you can save the programs onto virtual disk images.
 >You'd then have to transfer the virtual images into the Franklin where
 >there are Apple II based utilities that will convert the virtual disk
 >image files back into real physical diskettes.

 DO> Hmm, I may want toplay with the Mac versions myself.  I wonder if there
 DO> were any Apple //GS emulators developed.

There are a few...

For Mac OS 8.6/9.x, there are Gus, Bernie to the Rescue, and a few 
others. I mention Gus and Bernie by name only because those are what I 
have installed. 

Gus is actually created for an Apple Computer internal project and was NOT
supposed to have been publicly released (although it was). Gus is the 
only Apple II series emulator that does not require a ROM code file to 
start. As it was strictly created for the internal use of Apple Computer, 
there is no documentation available for it. Once you figure it out, it 
does work fairly well. Disk image management is pretty archaic, but then 
it doesn't need to be if it was built strictly for whatever 
super-double-secret purpose Apple Computer designed it for.  ;)

Bernie is shareware product from FE Systems Emulation Technology. Last 
time I checked, it was about $15 or so, however, I've not seen anything 
disabled while I've played around in the unpaid-for version. It's an 
emulator that works very well, from being able to fully play with GS 
options both within emulation as well as through the Mac's Bernie 
interface. It also has a killer disk image management system that works 
with both DOS 3.3 and ProDOS 140KB diskettes as well as ProDOS SmartDisk 
volumes (from 800KB floppies to 32MB hard drive images). Unlike Gus 
though, you do need to have a GS ROM image saved as a file in order for 
this emulator to run.

The problem with these two emulators is that they *only* work with a Mac 
booted natively under OS 9.x or earlier. They will *not* work as a Mac OS 
X Classic application.

On the Mac OS X side, the only emulator that I'm familiar with is the 
port of the *nix-based KEGS project. It's called KEGS-OSX 1.9 and while 
it does seem to work OK, it's disk image management is non-existant as an 
interface. In order to assign disk images, you need to close down the 
emulator, tweak a configuration file, then restart the emulator. That's 
the bad thing... the good thing is that this emulator will read any .DSK 
and .2mg image files, from 140KB on up to 32MB. One could conceivably 
create a 32MB .2mg GS/OS hard drive image and load it up with everything 
you'd need to run in an emulated session. Again, like the Bernie emulator 
above, you'll need to get your own GS ROM code into a file in order for 
this emulator to work.

A word about ROM codes. All of the emulators that require ROM codes do NOT
include them in their distribution packages. Apple Computer still holds
and protects the copyrights on the ROM codes and has not authorized any
one else to legally distribute them. Technically, and legally, you are
supposed to extract your own ROM code from a physical machine you already
have (instructions for this are available on the Web). In reality, there
are a number of Apple II sites on the Web and in FTP servers that one
could acquire the needed ROMs.

Here are a few emulation Web URLs:
  http://www.emulation.net
  http://emulation.emuscene.com
  http://www.bernie.gs/Bernie/

Regards,

Steve

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