GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

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GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

I have had positive experiences executing IIgs programs from an HFS partition (Games, utilities, etc...) I suppose I could also save games and files to an HFS too? Is this a safe practice with GSOS 6.0.3?

Also, is there a good utility for defragging HFS with an apple II? Does ProDOS fragment?

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Norris,

Is this a Hard Drive, or a CFFA Card?

Steven Smile

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Sorry, I have a Reactive Microdrive and a SCSI2SD.

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Norris,

So It's a CFFA Card with an SD Adapter.

I would think that if you have a hookup to your Mac (or PC) that you should
be able to do what ever you wanted.

But don't quote me. lol

Steven Smile

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

OSX dropped support for HFS in 10.6, but if you have an older OSX or MacOS machine, you can move the drive back and forth. There is also HFS support available for Linux, but I've never tried it.

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

I have only modern macs which have long since dropped both file system/driver/interfaceface support for scsi2sd..

(http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD)

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

You can just mount the SD card with a reader. I keep a 10.5 virtual machine around for moving files. The original Mac Minis can be had for a few bucks and also serve nicely for that purpose.

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Not sure how things got off track (sorry, must have been me), but I really only had 2 questions:

1-Is it a safe/ok practice to use HFS partitions on a IIgs (System 6.0.3) as working partitions in the same manner one might use ProDOS partitions?

2-Are there any IIgs utilities for defragmenting ProDOS and HFS partitions?

Regards

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Answering your questions:

1 - It is generally considered that using HFS partitions on a IIgs is somewhat risky due to the HFS driver in GS/OS being a little buggy. Now having said that, most of the critical bugs were fixed way back in the 90's (remember GUPP?) and these have now been incorporated into System 6.0.3 I believe. On my IIgs's I generally have 4 32Mb ProDOS partitions and 1 large HFS partition, and from memory I still tend to get more errors creeping in on the HFS partitions as opposed to the ProDOS partitions. The beauty of using a flash based memory as the hard drive is that you can easily back up the entire drive using Ciderpress in a matter of seconds - then if you notice you have errors, you can simply reimage the flash media from backup. One other thing to note regarding HFS partitions, is that many games/apps will not run if they are installed onto the HFS partition. It's pretty much a suck-it-and-see affair. You certainly cannot install the system software itself onto a HFS partition!

2 - There are couple of defrag utilities, but I've not used any of them and I'm not sure if they support HFS partitions. Some of the ones I know about are:
* Vitesse had Deliverance (or was it Salvation?)
* Quality Computers had Easy Drive

I personally would not risk trying to defrag using these (would you gain much??), but feel free to experiment and report back. Make sure you backup prior to doing so though. I haven't checked, but I assume that one or both of these would be on the "What is the Apple IIGS?" site.

Cheers,
Mike

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Dusting up this old thread. i’ve set up two ProDos partitionsand a single HFS partition using Ciderpress onto my CF card. The boot partition has GSOS 6.0.02 installed. When booting the IIGS I can see the ProDos partitions but not the HFS.

Anything I’ve missed?

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

What size HFS partition did you create? IIRC the maximum size supported by GS/OS is ~4Gb. So if you've gone over this limit it may explain why it isn't showing up. Try creating a 2Gb partition and see if that shows up.

One other thing to try, if you run GS/OS's partition manager program (can't remember the name offhand - maybe HDPart??) is your HFS partition displayed?

I've never owned a MicroDrive card, but I believe they have their own partitioning software that only runs under GS/OS. Have you tried running this? Maybe you need to use this to create the paritions for this particular card?

I'm pretty certain the HFS FST (file system translator) is installed by default in GS/OS, but it might pay to check that it has been installed (check the System folder).

ggb
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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

I think the max size of HFS volume under GSOS is 2GB

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

The partition is roughly 800 MB on a 1 GB card. The interface is Classic IDE from Tecnobytes. The manual instructs to create the partition in Ciderpress and write it on the CF card which I did. Just curious whether it needs to be initialized somehow or does Ciderpress do that for you?

I understood that GSOS 6.0.2 contains the HFS bug fix at least. Should I try the advanced disk manager?

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Re: GSOS 6 and using HFS partitions

Ahh.... I got confused by another poster earlier in the thread saying that they were using a MicroDrive from ReactiveMicro and thought it was you - sorry for the mix up!

Since you have a Classic IDE card, this is essentially a clone of the CFFA v2 card (I believe). These cards have the partition map stored on the card itself and you need to go into the configuration menu to setup the partition scheme you wish to use. To enter the menu on a CFFA you press the "M" key on startup - I assume the Classic IDE boards would be the same or similar (check your manual if "M" doesn't work).

So basically with these cards, the card specifies the partition map. It's stored in the EEPROM as opposed to on the disk itself.

There should be detailed instructions in the Classic IDE manual - or failing that, grab the CFFA v2 manual from here:
http://dreher.net/projects/CFforAppleII/downloads/CFFA_Manual_2.11.pdf

It's been a while since I messed around with my CFFA v2 card, but reading the manual again just now, you *may* need to flash the older version of the firmware to use HFS partitions because you may need to use Dave Lyon's GS/OS driver (I don't remember this being the case, but then again as I said, it's been a while).

Hopefully this is all spelled out in the manual.

I know with my CFFA v2 card I use 4 32Mb partitions and 1 big HFS partition all running on a 1Gb CF card and have done for many years - I just can't remember which firmware version I am running.

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