July 90 - HOW TO CREATE A MIXED-PARTITION CD-ROM
HOW TO CREATE A MIXED-PARTITION CD-ROM
LLEW ROBERTS
Since the original Phil & Dave's Excellent CD was released, containing both Macintosh
HFS and Apple II ProDOS volumes, DTS has gotten many questions about how it was
done. Some ask just out of curiosity, while others want to create their own
mixed-partition CD-ROMs. This article gives a detailed account of how any developer
can prepare a mixed-partition hard disk whose image can be pressed onto CD-ROM.
The process of producing a CD-ROM disc containing both HFS and ProDOS volumes is
relatively simple and straightforward. It's facilitated by the fact that Apple's operating
systems recognize the data track of a CD-ROM as if it were a SCSI hard disk. You
prepare a hard disk exactly as you wish it to appear on CD-ROM, ship it off to a CD
production company, and they send you back a CD.
Mixing partitions is easiest if you have a 600+ MB hard disk, but you can also mix
partitions if you have two or more smaller hard disks. We'll get down to the brass
tacks of this procedure after a preliminary discussion of why you might want to mix
HFS and ProDOS partitions, and some background information about partitions that you
need to know if you're to fully understand the procedure.
WHY MIX HFS AND PRODOS PARTITIONS?
Why would a developer want to create a CD-ROM that mixes HFS and ProDOS volumes?
For one thing, combining HFS and ProDOS volumes on one CD is a way for developers of
Apple II applications to make their applications and files available both locally and
through AppleShare ® fileservers (which only read CD-ROMs in HFS format) with
minimal additional effort. For another, mixing partitions is a way to distribute
applications and files so they can be read by both the Macintosh and the Apple II.
Perhaps a more obvious solution to the problem of creating a CD-ROM readable by
both the Macintosh and the Apple II would be to convert all volumes to the ISO 9660