Egan Ford, the curator of the Apple ][ Game Server and the Apple ][ Disk Server, has come up with a new application which writes games directly to a disk allowing them to be played, without DOS or ProDOS on the Apple ][. According to his posting on Comp.sys.apple2 usenet group, “I just posted c2d (code to disk) to http://asciiexpress.net/files. I included the source with OS/X and Windows binaries. c2d will take a single binary (with or without 4-byte DOS header) or a text monitor listing and create a bootable diskette (dsk) image.”
This tool makes the Apple ][ game server files even more useful allowing users to create a fast booting disk or disk image for emulators.
usage: c2d [-vh?]
c2d [-m] input[.mon],[load_address] output.dsk
-h|? this help
-m jump to monitor after booting
-v print version number and exit
input without a .mon extension is assumed to be a binary with a 4 byte header. If the header is missing then you must append ,load_address to the binary input filename, e.g. filename,800. The load address will be read as hex. input with a .mon extension expected input format:
0800: A2 FF 9A 20 8C 02 20 4F
0808: 03 4C 00 FF 20 9E 02 A9
Examples:
c2d hello hello.dsk
c2d hello.mon hello.dsk
c2d hello,800 hello.dsk
c2d -m test,300 test.dsk
A sample session using the c2d tool:
$ c2d air_cars,6000 air.dsk
Reading air_cars, type BINARY, start: $6000, length: 8192
Number of sectors: 32
Sector page range: $60 – $7F
After boot, jump to: $6000
Writing air_cars to T:01/S:00 – T:02/S:15 on air.dsk
$ c2d moon.patrol,801 moon.dsk
Reading moon.patrol, type BINARY, start: $0801, length: 18460
Number of sectors: 73
Sector page range: $08 – $50
After boot, jump to: $0801
Writing moon.patrol to T:01/S:00 – T:05/S:08 on moon.dsk
To download the c2d tool and the source code, go to the AsciiExpress website at:
http://asciiexpress.net/files/
or download it directly at:
http://asciiexpress.net/files/c2d-0.1.zip