Conference hydra::amiga_v1

3305.0. "A note on Disk-2-Disk and 64 question" by MSBIS1::LANDINGHAM (Guy M.,BXB1-1/F11,293-5297) Mon Jan 08 1990 19:49

Hello,

I have a very basic question regarding the C64.  My brother-in-law recently
acquired a used 64 and bought a new FSD-2 drive for it.  While he was visiting
us this Christmas, we decided to try to download some of the software from the
C64 toolshed on DNEAST using my Amiga 1000.  We picked up Disk-2-Disk and gave
it a shot...

(Disk-2-Disk pulled a fast one in that only in their on-disk documentation do
they let you know they couldn't get the software to write on tracks 1-17 of the
C64 disk!  Pretty sleazy manuever on their part in my opinion.)

Now Bob is an absolute computer neophyte and I know very little about the C64. 
The Disk-2-Disk program asks you to specify which of four types each file is
before you transfer it from AmigaDOS to the C64 floppy: SEQ, REL, USR and PRG. 
I took a wild guess that any files that ended with ".PRG" were PRG files, and
that doc and text files were SEQ.


He brought the disks we made back home to Georgia and tried to run some of the
programs; needless to say none worked.  He used the LOAD command on several of
the PRG files, they loaded ok.  But a RUN command always gets him syntax errors.
Over the phone, I tried to get him to list the programs after each was loaded. 
He would get SYNTAX ERROR AT 2058, while a LIST 2058 printed nothing on the
screen.

I seem to remember seeing somewhere that the 64 can store BASIC programs in
compressed format.  All of this software seems to be in that form, since I
cannot examine it using EVE/TPU.

Notwithstanding the risk of a few angry RTFM's, can someone give me a rundown on
what the SEQ, REL, USR and PRG file "types" mean?  Are we using the right
command to load these programs into memory and run them?

Thanks very much for any help you can offer,

Kip

(Cross-posted)