Disk Disintegrater Deluxe review
By Grant Kwai
Copyright (c) 1990 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
One of the best disk compacting programs available on the Apple // series is a Shareware program called Disk Disintegrater Deluxe. The programmer is an American by the name of Louis Roy and he asks for a small fee of $US29.95 for his work.
You may now ask, "What use is this program to me?". Well, to answer that question, ask anyone with an Apple // and a modem. They will be quite aware of the power of this program. It has the ability to pack a non-protected 5.25" or 3.5" disk into a small compacted file. This makes life much easier when transferring files over a modem, by reducing the transfer time, and hence cost for STD calls.
To all the other Apple // users, this program can still be of benefit. If you are lucky enough to possess a hard drive, you can pack your standard floppies onto your hard drive, saving you approximately 40% of your hard drives space. All you will then need to do is unpack the programs that you want and you'll be on your way! Another way would be to pack your disks, then store them on a tape backup unit, which can be run on an IBM, Macintosh or others, as long as you transfer the file onto that particular machines environment. All the data is safely stored in the file so it is possible to save these files on another type of machine then "bring them back to life" on the old trusty Apple //.
To pack a disk, it is a simple procedure of following the prompts. DDD is fully menu driven. You can pack disks to any drive available, even Ram cards if there is enough space. The program itself requires a minimum of 64k. If you have 128k, then DDD will make use of this as a 59.4k buffer to store and retrieve the compacted data.
If you possess a //gs, DDD can be configured to take full advantage of the extra memory. Also, if you have a Zip Chip or some other form of an accelerator, it also has the option of changing the speed of the machine (ie in Mhz). The use of the mouse is also optional.
DDD only took about 2-3 minutes to pack a standard 5.25" ProDOS disk, that was completely full, and managed to shrink the original disk to about 63% of its original size.
DDD also allows the user to enter a small message at the beginning of each packed disk stating something which the packer has chosen. This information is stored with the final packed data. For example, it might say who packed it and when it was packed, with some other brief instructions. This information is re-displayed by DDD whenever that data is unpacked in the future.
Not only does it pack and unpack a disk, but is also contains other functions such as formatting disks, typing text or Appleworks Word processor files, renaming files and volumes plus many more.
There has obviously been much work put into this piece of software, and if you can, get a copy and try it out as it
would be well worth your time and effort. You can find the latest version, D.D Deluxe 5.0, on most bulletin boards and in most public domain Libraries. Unfortunately, the documentation disk which is supposed to come with this program doesn't seem to have made it into Australia. DDD is fully menu driven so documentation is not really required. However, documentation for the older version, V4.2, is available if required.
DDD is available for downloading from the Apple // BBS.

THIS CONTENT COPYRIGHT © 2007, APPLE MACINTOSH USERS' GROUP, SYDNEY
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