MAC-2-DOS V1.0 RELEASE NOTES Typed in by ???. Edited by PARASITE. August 16, 1989 Thanks for purchasing Mac-2-Dos. These notes include corrections and additions to the Mac-2-Dos User's Guide, in no particular order. AUTOMATIC CONFIGURATION Mac-2-Dos (the program) looks for the Mac-2-Dos interface and Mac disk drive automatically when you start it. The interface and drive respond to control signals sent out by the Amiga. If the program does not detect the proper response, it warns you with this message: Can't find Mac disk drive...quitting This message means that the Mac-2-Dos interface board and/or the Mac drive is not responding to commands from the Amiga. Make sure that the interface is properly attached to the last Amiga disk drive or the disk port on the Amiga. Be sure to read the hardware installation section of the manual (page 3) and pay particular attention to the warning regarding power. Power MUST be turned off before attaching the Mac-2-Dos interface and the Mac drive to your Amiga. If all of your floppy disk drives become unusable even after you remove Mac-2-Dos, you have probably damaged one of the 8520 CIA chips. The 8520 CIA is especially prone to damage from connecting the interface while the power is turned on. PRINTING AMIGA FILES ON A MACINTOSH The Mac-2-Dos User's Guide states that to print a document or a PostScript file on the Mac, all you need to do is click on the name of the file and select Print from the File Menu. While this is true, it leaves out one very important fact: there must be some application program on the Mac which can print your document. When you select the file for printing, the Finder program on the Mac looks at the file type and creator codes which Mac-2-Dos assigned to the file at the time of the transfer to the Mac disk. The creator code MUST specify a Mac program which can handle printing, such as Microsoft Word or MacWrite. And that program must be available on the Mac. If both of these conditions are not met, you may have problems printing the document. If you plan to make Mac disks on your Amiga and take them to a Mac at another location, be sure you know ahead of time what print program is available on that particular Mac so that you can select the proper file type and creator codes for the document BEFORE you transfer it to the Mac disk. That will make things go more smoothly when you try to print the document on the Mac. WORD PERFECT DOCUMENT CONVERSION If you plan to convert Word Perfect documents from the Mac to the Amiga you will need a special conversion utility program to convert the Mac document into a Version 4.1 document on the Amiga. (This conversion is NOT needed to go the other way.) This conversion program, cleverly called FC (for File Converter), is available directly from Word Perfect Corp. Contact Mike Hendirksen, at 800-321-3204 for more details. SAVE/LOAD OPTIONS Use Save Options from the Project Menu to preserve your preferred options and conversion choices. If you make temporary options changes and then wish to return to your original options choices, select the Load Options item from the Project Menu. If you wish to force Mac-2-Dos to restore the original default options, simply delete the options file, which is stored in the S: directory under the name M2D.OPT. The options file has no icon. INCLUDING/EXCLUDING FILES Before including/excluding by name or all be sure that the COPY arrow points in the right direction. If not, click on a file name on the side you plan to copy FROM. MAC DESKTOP FILE When Mac-2-Dos formats a Mac disk, it initializes the directory structure, but it does not create a desktop file for the Mac. However, when you load the disk into a Mac, the Mac will create the disktop file and store it on the disk. Note that on both the Mac and the Amiga the desktop file is invisible. PROTECTED MAC DISKS Mac-2-Dos works only with standard Mac floppy disk formats. It does not work with special disk formats or with disks having special copy-protection formats. AMIGA ICON FILES Mac-2-Dos can copy Amiga icon files (files ending in .info) to the Mac, but they WILL NOT work as icons on the Mac. For that reason there is no reason to copy them across. HARDWARE TIMER B Mac-2-Dos uses CIAB Timer B to generate precise timing signals. It verifies that the timer is not already in use before using it. However, if the timer is already in use, Mac-2-Dos cannot function properly. If Mac-2-Dos needs the timer, it knows that when it first starts running, and immediately allocates it. If Mac-2-Dos reports that it cannot use the timer, this is probably caused by some other program which is already using the timer. Terminate other programs to free the timer, and try running Mac-2-Dos again. FILE INFO/RENAME FILE The Rename File menu item described in the manual does not exist. We combined the Rename File menu item with the File Info menu item, and made it possible to change more than the file name. You can also examine and change the file's protection status (protected files cannot be deleted or overwritten). For Mac files, you can also examine and change the file type and creator codes. This makes it possible to change these codes on an existing file without having to transfer the file again. The File Info menu item applies to only a single file - the first file you have "selected". If you have selected none, the request is ignored. If you have selected more than one file, only the first file from the list is displayed. Note that the date displayed by File Info is the date of last modification. The file date and size fields cannot be changed. If you rename an Amiga file, you must rename the Amiga icon file separately. The rename function DOES NOT automatically rename the icon file. The icon file has the same name with the characters ".info" added. MacBinary CONVERSION The MacBinary conversion option is useful only where Mac program or data files originated on some other computer or where you wish to transfer a Mac program to another Mac via your Amiga. We have used MacBinary to provide a Mac program, ResEdit, to you on the Mac-2-Dos master disk. You may find it useful for downloading Mac programs onto your Amiga and then transferring them to a Mac disk. We have transferred graphic images from the IBM PC to the Mac via the Amiga. You can use a PC program called HIJAAK (Inset Systems, Brookfield, CT) to capture a PC screen image and save it in Mac (MacBinary) format. Then, using our Amiga program Dos-2-Dos, we transferred the image from a PC disk to the Amiga. Then using the Mac-2-Dos MacBinary conversion, we transferred the image onto a Mac disk into MacPaint format, where we displayed it on a Mac. Pretty neat! RESEDIT ResEdit (Resource Editor) is a public domain utility program for the Mac which we have found to be very useful while developing Mac-2-Dos. And since Mac-2-Dos provides a neat way to store Mac programs on an Amiga disk, we decided to provide it to you as part of the Mac-2-Dos package. To use ResEdit, simply transfer it to a Mac disk using the MacBinary conversion option. ResEdit has no icon on the Amiga, but carries its own icon with it to the Mac. ASCII Undefined Characters For ASCII conversions in either direction, if Mac-2-Dos finds a character for which there is no direct conversion to ASCII on the other machine, it replaces the character with a question mark '?'. DON'T LOSE YOUR VALUABLE DATA! When you transfer Amiga files to a Mac, we recommend formatting a new disk and using it to transfer the files to the Mac. You should never write your Amiga files onto a Mac disk which has other, critical files on it. If you do want to transfer Amiga files onto a Mac disk which already has important files on it, make sure you have that disk backed up, in case of problems. While we have tested Mac-2-Dos extensively, you should understand that this is a new program which contains a virgin implementation of the Mac filing system. There may be problems which show up under adverse conditions. So to be safe, always use a freshly-formatted Mac disk and make sure your critical Mac files are safe on another disk. DISPLAY TABS IN TEXT If you display the contents of a text file using the Display Text option, Mac-2-Dos interprets tabs in the text every 8 columns. Note that this is a display function only, and tabs ARE NOT interpreted during ASCII file conversion. POSTSCRIPT CONVERSIONS Mac-2-Dos provides a specific PostScript conversion option. That option should work fine, at least in most cases. There may be times, depending on the situation, where either No Conversion or ASCII conversion may work better for you. BLOCK SIZE Mac-2-Dos displays progress in transferring a file by displaying a running "block" count on the copy status screen. For the purposes of this status display, a block is consists of 512 bytes. MAC FONTS This version of Mac-2-Dos does not convert fonts from one machine to the other. We are planning to add this feature to the next release of Mac-2-Dos. In the meantime, you can use a public domain Mac font conversion program with Mac-2-Dos to accomplish transfer of Mac fonts to the Amiga. The program is called MacFont, and it is available on Fish Disk 138. We have not used this program and cannot verify its usefulness. IFF SCREEN RESOLUTION CHOICES We have added a screen resolution menu item to the Other Options menu which makes it possible for you to specify whether you want a MacPaint file converted to 320x200 or 640x400 (interlace) IFF format. The actual size of the image is not affected. It remains 640x720. But this makes it possible for you to force the screen mode to the proper resolution for the paint program you are using. Some paint programs, such as Graphicraft, cannot accept hi-res images. This option applies only to transfers from MacPaint to IFF. "ASK" OPTIONS The Other Options menu has two "Ask" items which direct Mac-2-Dos to ask you for the file type and creator codes or default tool name when you transfer files with the No Conversion option selected. If you always transfer the same types of files, you may wish to avoid having to specify these codes every time you select No Conversion. If so, change the menu items to reflect your desires, and then save the options to disk. These options apply only to the No Conversion conversion option. For all other conversion options, you specify your desired file type, creator and default tool codes using the Edit Types/Tools menu item. NEXT RELEASE FEATURES As we completed Mac-2-Dos, we received many suggestions and requests for additional features and conversions. We decided not to delay the product any more, so some of the features which you have requested are not in this version. However, here is a partial list of enhancements we are considering for the next release of Mac-2-Dos: Color conversions View ILBM PICT/IFF TIFF/IFF FONTS SMF/SMUS HYPERCARD STACKS RTF/DCA Everyone who returns the product registration card to us will be notified when the next release is available. Registered users will be able to upgrade to the new version for a small fee. Keep in touch. If we don't hear from you, you won't hear from us! We welcome your comments and suggestions.