User`s guide

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From: Rubywand
004- Recently I found that some of my old 5.25" disks
would not boot. A check showed splotches etched on the
surface of the media. What's going on?
As you may recall, a number of the classier 5.25" diskette brands employed
(still employ?) a lubricant on their jacket liners. While the lube worked to
reduce drag and noise, it also, evidently, served as a growth medium for a
particularly nasty plastic and/or oxide-eating fungus!
It's probably a good idea to check each of your old diskettes. Immediately
backup any diskettes with splotchy discolorations.
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005- How can I defragment a diskette and what is the
speed gain?
You can defragment a diskette by doing a File Copy of all files to a blank
formatted* diskette or RAM disk which is the same size as the original. The
Files on the copy diskette or RAM disk will be almost completely unfragmented.
*Note: If the diskette is supposed to be bootable, the target disk should be
INITialized for the DOS (e.g. DOS 3.3 or ProDOS) used on the original before
doing the copying. For DOS 3.3, you INIT a disk. For ProDOS, you can do an
"Initialize" from the IIgs Finder or a "FORMAT" using Apple's ProDOS FILER
utility or a ProDOS version of Copy II+.
A whole-disk copy back to the original completes the process. Tests show
that this method produces much speedier diskettes than using a utility intended
for optimizing hard disks.
For a nearly full 'workhorse' diskette which has seen may deletions and
additions, you can expect the File Copy defragmentation method to yield a 30% to
40% improvement in access speed.
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006- Why aren't my MECC and many other old diskettes
recognized by GS/OS and mounted on the Finder display?
The problem you mention is fairly common. GS/OS via its FSTs has pretty
strict definitions for what qualifies as a valid DOS or ProDOS diskette. For
example, perfectly good 36-track DOS 3.3 diskettes will not be mounted by the
Finder just because the number of tracks is 36 instead of the expected 35.
Naturally, copy-protected diskettes have practically no chance of being
recognized. Almost certainly, this is the reason the Finder will not mount your
MECC disks.