Asimov
Copyright 1996-2000 Ninjaforce
All Rights Reserved									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 ŇrealÓ 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 havenŐt 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


Contacting Ninjaforce

If you encounter any problems with this software, or just want to chat with us, please feel free to drop us a line.

	E-Mail		mail@ninjaforce.com

	WWW			http://www.ninjaforce.com

	Snail Mail		Ninjaforce
				Adolf-Rausch-Str. 24
				64124 Heidelberg
				Germany