Seeking a ProFile Pascal disk image

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Seeking a ProFile Pascal disk image

Hi folks. As part of a project relating to the Apple Lisa, I'm hoping someone out there might have a disk image of a 5MB ProFile hard drive initialised with an Apple Pascal filesystem. There doesn't need to be anything interesting at all on the hard drive---in fact, there don't need to be any files on it at all. Just the initialised filesystem is enough.

 

Even though my project is Lisa-related, I'm looking for a disk initialised by Apple Pascal running on an Apple II or Apple ///.

 

My motivation is this: I'd like to better understand the Lisa Monitor, an environment similar to Apple Pascal used inside Apple for developing software for the Lisa. We know what the floppy disk format that the Monitor uses is like, but the format for ProFile hard drives is still a mystery, and none of the Monitor floppy disks we have right now appear to have tools for initialising a ProFile. It's possible then that you were just supposed to use a ProFile initialised on an Apple II or an Apple ///.

 

The idea does seem a bit far-fetched, since the 6502 machines were little-endian and the 68000 is big-endian. Still, the Monitor filesystem may have a lot of structure in common with an Apple Pascal filesystem, so seeing the contents of a Pascal ProFile could be useful.

 

It occurs to me that I could use an emulator to make my own Pascal filesystem, but so far I couldn't find any emulators that also include a ProFile hard drive specifically. Perhaps I missed one?

 

Thanks for any help!

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I don't have a hard drive

I don't have a hard drive image like you're looking for, but I've attached an ISO containing a number of Lisa floppy images -- there's a folder in there called "Lisa Pascal Workshop", and another with Lisa OS install images. Hopefully it proves useful.

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My ProFile was initialised

My ProFile was initialised with S.O.S.. 

 

I can make a disk image of the Apple II Profile manager for you, and you can init it with the Pascal format. This had a number of flaws, as files inthe Pascal format required contiguous disk space, and very little software was released to use that format. 

 

If you have the tools to image it, and want to bond the unit against damage or loss, I would be happy to send you my 10MB ProFile drive to image--I do not know how or with what tools I would do that on modern HW. 

 

Alternatively, if you know what toold to use on an Apple II, and can supply a ProFile controller (mine vanished), I could do it here. I have a 10MB ProFile with no controller card. my Apple /// vanished with its //e emulation card, and the //e with a ProFile card also vanished, but the actual ProFile did not. As far as I am aware, it still works. I used it about 8 years ago. 

 

If any of that is useful, please send a PM to me. GL in any case. 

 

 

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.

As it happens, I do have a nifty standalone gizmo that can image a ProFile. A Lisa can do it as well using a program like BLU.

 

Unfortunately I don't have an Apple II that can talk to a ProFile... only our //c here. (It's probably just as well---unless you're in the UK too, it would probably be difficult to ship the thing to me!) I've got a couple 5MB ProFiles myself, too, and have even designed a tiny (fits in the palm of your hand) ProFile emulator of my own! Unfortunately for my project, I only have Lisas to talk to these devices.

 

Is the Apple II ProFile manager program you mention the same as the Pascal ProFile Manager that seems to turn up on various sites?

 

@Dr Webster: thanks for the ISO---the Lisa Pascal Workshop is yet a third environment that runs atop the Lisa OS and its (relatively) sophisticated filesystem, so it probably won't illuminate much about the filesystem for the much earlier and more primitive Monitor operating system. Still, I tried to download and have a look inside and couldn't really make much progress... I'm working on a Linux machine, so perhaps it can't understand the .iso's filesystem.

 

Ah filesystems---they're too much trouble! Let's go back to cassette tapes.

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Ah -- the .iso I uploaded is

Ah -- the .iso I uploaded is a Mac disk image, so if you're on Linux, you're going to have a hard time mounting that filesystem. Here's a Zip file of the floppy images -- the forum software doesn't allow uploading .zip files, so you'll need to change the file extension on this one back to .zip to uncompress it.

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Sorry about that. zip is

Sorry about that. zip is allowed now.

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