Ninjaforce - Asimov

Asimov v2.0

Introduction

With Asimov you can create disk images for use with all the Apple II emulators out there. You can also write data from disk images back onto a “real” disk (i.e. 5.25" floppy, 3.5" disk, ProDOS harddisk, ...)

Asimov uses the Universal Disk Image format (also known as the 2IMG format) as its primary format for disk images. In addition, Asimov can handle most of the other Apple II disk image formats as well.

System Requirements

Asimov requires an Apple IIGS and GS/OS.

It does not work properly on Bernie II The Rescue (Macintosh) and Sweet 16 (BeOS), two famous Apple IIGS emulators. We haven’t been able to test it with KeGS yet, another GS emulator available for UNIX machines.

Using Asimov

Afer you have launched Asimov, you will be presented with the following options:

About...

Displays credits. Read them carefully.

Create IMAGE from disk...

This will read out a GS/OS volume and write it to an image file. Asimov supports all volumes that are available under GS/OS. You can choose the type of disk image you would like to create. See below for further details.

Create DISK from image...

Lets you choose an image file to write to a volume. Depending on the image file, only volumes of the proper size can be written to. Example: an 800k disk image will only fit on a 3.5" disk.

See below for a list of image types that Asimov can handle. When you select a 5.25" raw disk image, you will be asked to specify the order. See below for details on DOS order .

Quit

Quits the program. You can quit to the launching application, restart the system, or hardboot a specific slot. The latter means that the Startup Slot in the GS Control Panel will be set to the slot you choose before the system will be restarted.

Disk image types

The following is a list of image file types that Asimov can create and read. Please note: nibble images are not supported.

Universal Disk Image

This is the common standard among Apple IIGS emulators nowadays. The format can handle all sizes of disks: 5.25" floppies, 3.5" disks, harddisks, etc.

Recommendation: Use this format for all except 5.25" disks!
Possible filename suffixes: .2IMG, .2MG

Raw Data Image

Simple and thus popular among Apple II emulators, this image type is just the plain disk data written to a file. Please note: DiskCopy 6.0 images are also Raw Data Images.

5.25" floppy disk images are treated in a special way: because this image format lacks the ability to store additional information, the user needs to know which order the image is stored in: DOS 3.3 order or ProDOS order. The different orders come from the fact that DOS 3.3 maintains a different disk layout as ProDOS. Sometimes the format can be distinguished from the filename suffix, where .DO means DOS 3.3 order and .PO stands for ProDOS order. Asimov will let you choose the order but give a recommendation. Out of tradition, most images are DOS 3.3 order.

Recommendation: Use DOS 3.3 order for 5.25" disks only!
Possible filename suffixes: .DSK, .RAW, .DO, .PO

Disk Copy 4.2 Image

This is an obsolete image type, but you might still come across such image files.

Recommendation: Do not use this format to create images.
Possible filename suffix: .DC