Apple II CDs
Various
Copyright (c) 1995 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Two Apple II CD Roms became available earlier this year. Digisoft's Golden Orchard CD and the AUGE user group CD are collections of public domain, shareware and Apple software. Here are some comments about these collections gathered from the internet comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup.
* The Golden Orchard CD really has some useful stuff on it. The Golden Orchard has GS System software from version 1.1 to 6.0.1 which is great for our user group library. Also included is the IIe software for the IIe card and the Apple OneScanner SCSI software.
* My first impression is that there is surprisingly little duplication. This impression is a gut feeling, not an indepth analysis, that does _not_ include the fonts, music, or graphics directories. On the other hand, there is a surprisingly large amount of duplication just on the Golden Orchard: the entire ProDOS partition contents seems to be duplicated on GO-Main or some other HFS partition. This "wastes" 15MB for little apparent gain.
* I am very pleased that most files on Golden Orchard are _not_ compressed. This makes browsing much more pleasant.
* Golden Orchard is bootable into GSOS 6.0.1.
* The Golden Orchard partitions are:
GO.PRODOS 20 MB (19.5 MB Used) Prodos
GO-Main 71 MB (69.3MB Used) HFS
GO-Misc16Bit 80MB (77.2MB Used) HFS
GO-G.S. 128MB (127.7MB Used) HFS
GO-Disks 144MB (143.3MB Used) HFS
GO-Applications 82MB (80.3MB Used) HFS
GO-Programming 125MB (121.8MB Used) HFS
Total 650MB
All partitions mount on the GS, but the Mac is a problem. As stated in the included 'read.me' paper, the Apple CD driver only mounts one partition (GO-Main). To mount the others require a third party driver. FWB CD Toolkit is specifically mentioned. I have Insignia's RapidCd, and _IT Doesn't WORK_.
* The AUGE CD is, for all intents and purposes, not organized. Without the supplied index (which has many errors) it would be hopeless.
* Golden Orchard is very nicely organized. But the lack of any kind of index at all is rather annoying. To discover if what you are looking for is on the CD you have to mount it and paw through the directories. Since my CD is usually attached to my Mac (and Appleshared to the GS) this is extremely awkward (remember my Mac won't mount all the partitions). This is the biggest disappointment of the CD. Yes, I've run a recursive directory listing to a text file, but an index is more than a file list dump.
* Golden Orchard is rather weak in games.
* Golden Orchard is rather good in programming, but some things are curiously missing. Foundation is there but I didn't see rEdit. (Maybe I just missed it.) Jawaid Bazyar's Scheme not there.
* Obviously each person will be attracted to what they are interested in. I felt the 128MB used for GO-G.S. (containing most of the graphics and sounds) could have been more profitably filled with 'GS' stuff rather than GIFS and MODS and etc. But you may be thrilled to see all the graphics and sounds.
* Conclusion? Both the AUGE and Golden Orchard CDs are worth getting for different reasons and contents. Both are inconvenient in their own unique ways. I am glad to have both, but the definitive Apple IIgs CD is yet to be created. There is still room for another.
* The Golden Orchard CD is a tremendous achievement and asset. I'm not displeased at all that I bought one. It has far more good points than negatives, but analyses tend to be delta's from perfection, not delta's from zero. If I had started typing a post listing all the 'standard good points' Golden Orchard has that many other CDs are supposed to include, but don't, I would still be typing.
* Anyone who is serious about having safe copies of a vast quantity of Apple II lore should have a copy.
More information on Golden Orchard CD is available in the April and May 1995 issues of Applecations or email: digisoft@hypermall.com
More information on the AUGE CD is available in the July 1994 issue of Applecations or email: u.huth@genie.com

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