Beagle Bros Prontodos "Updater" Disk

Prontodos is a high-compatibility speeded version of DOS 3.3. For most
DOS tasks, Prontodos is 3-4 times faster than standard Apple DOS 3.3.
Prontodos uses the same commands as standard DOS 3.3.

The Prontodos Updater disk boots Prontodos. Selecting the PRONTO UPDATE
option lets you change a bootable standard DOS 3.3 diskette to one that
boots Prontodos. The update to Prontodos changes just a few parts of DOS
on bootable disks. Files and disk layout are not affected.

Beagle recommends that you make a backup of a diskette before doing this
modification. Try out the changed disk and make sure everything works the
way it should.

Note: Prontodos uses a block of memory left blank in the early (1980) release
of DOS 3.3. Later versions of DOS 3.3 appear to use this area. So, it is
probably a good idea to do the Prontodos update only on diskettes which boot
the early DOS 3.3. (A good check seems to be to boot the diskette in questiont,
get to the BASIC prompt, and enter ...

?PEEK(46725)

The result should be 165 for early versions of DOS 3.3.)


Another way to use the Prontodos disk is to boot it and INIT blank disks.
(Diskettes must be 5.25" DD "360k" types. 1.2MB HD diskettes will not work
with most Apple II drives.)  You can use Copy II Plus or some other file
copy utility to copy files from old DOS 3.3 diskettes to the Prontodos disks.

For example, after booting the Prontodos disk, you exit to the BASIC prompt,
swap in a blank diskette, and enter ...

NEW   (to get rid of the Beagle program in memory)

Then you can enter a short HELLO program.

10 PRINT "PRONTODOS"
20 END

Then, you can INIT one or more diskettes with ...

INIT HELLO

This will produce a nearly empty diskette that will boot Prontodos and
start the HELLO program. (Later on, you can overwrite the HELLO program
with a different program you'd like to run.)

As with DOS 3.3, once Prontodos is loaded in from any bootable disk, it can
INIT other Prontodos disks.



Prontodos.zip includes the Prontodos updater disk in .dsk disk image form and
.sdk ShrinkIt whole-disk archive form:   

Prontodos.dsk-  a bootable DOS 3.3 .dsk disk image
 This file may be used on an Apple II emulator or converted 
 back to diskette form via a PC-->Apple2 ADT transfer (or, 
 the file may be converted to diskette on a 128k Apple II via
 DSK2FILE or, on a IIgs, via ASIMOV).
 See Csa2 File Utilities FAQs.

Prontodos.sdk-  a bootable DOS 3.3 shrinked disk
 This file should be unshrinked to 5.25" diskette using
 8-bit ShrinkIt.
 See Csa2 File Utilities FAQs for more about ShrinkIt.


Rubywand