The VintageGeek Blog

March 17, 2019 NOTE: As of March 17, 2019 The Hard Drive Images on Alex Lee’s site noted below have all been redone with a block size compatible with the MicroDrive Turbo.

http://whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/updates-and-the-current-state-of-solid-state-storage/

This post is about how CiderPress and MicroDrive Turbo treat some 32 MB hard drive images that are found on Alex Lee’s site for the IIGS. Some of the images are larger than others by a block. This is not an issue with CFFA3000 cards or Emulators. But with MicroDrive Turbo cards and CiderPress this led to an issue with loading them onto the partitions as recommended by the microdrive documentation. This post carries on from my post of 5 days ago.

http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za

So I experimented by increasing the block size by one as you’ll see in the pictures below and the odd sized or other sized, if you want to call them that, images loaded just fine and work on the MicroDrive without issue so far.

This reports the files in KBytes but illustrates the different sizes.

The series of screens can also serve as a bit of a tutorial on using CiderPress to load images.

Image 1: The 3 Partitions that come standard. All are 65535 as recommended in the manual.

Image 2: Two of the three partitions appear on the desktop. The third does not appear since its image is not loaded, as yet.

Now I add a 4th Partition. A 65356 block partition.

Using the Volume Copier in CiderPress

You’ll see the 3rd and 4th Partitions listed. One at 65535 blocks. My experimental at 65536 blocks.

Loading the Productivity and Graphics image.

Now, loading the other size, block size, image. System Addons.

Here the images appear on the desktop.

Starting MicroDrive Setup from GSOS to add another partition, Load it, and use it.