1 Nov
2011
1 Nov
'11
4:07 p.m.
On 11/1/11 2:15 PM, "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011, Christian Bartsch | KryoFlux Ltd.
wrote:
-snip-
- We released
the full source code to our own format, IPF, introduced over
ten years ago, that stores original data as found on original disks, e.g.
custom formats and copy protection.
Can we do better? Please let us know!
I'm pleased to see the project opening up (release of library source,
etc). I was a bit uncomfortable with what I perceived to be a proprietary
approach earlier on.
What would really be the clincher for me is the ability to take a sector
image of the various machines, e.g. an Apple ProDOS or DOS 3.3 "*.po"
image and write it to a diskette. I get the impression that it currently
has the ability to read flux transitions and extract such sector images,
but nothing mentions the capability of re-creating a track image and
writing them out to media. From reading their forums to turn the resulting data
into an image you have
to send it to them and they have to process it. Their
explination is that
the software and knowledge is beyond the pricepoint of most people
(software) and most people don't have the knowledge to decode a flux
recording....
From their FAQ.
-
Q: Is it true that at present, the only way to make IPF is to send it to SPS
as the current software does not have the function to make IPF? Will the
functions to make IPF images and write these back to disk be made available
in the near future i.e are you guys working on enabling these functions for
public use?
A: KryoFlux is an imaging solution. It was made to ingest a broad range of
source media and directly transfer standard formats into sector dump images.
IPFs are made by preservationists that have a strong knowledge of disk
coding, formats and protections. The software used for this, the CTA
Software Preservation Analyser, is a highly specialised product that is
available to institutions, archives and libraries. It is also available to
private users, but its high price tag is very likely to be beyond what a
private person is willing to invest.
Preserving software is not a one-click process although the Analyser has
advanced features built in that help working on a disk very fast.
Nevertheless, in the hands of an untrained person, the analyser will not be
of much use.
Because of this, making IPFs is not available in DTC. These are two products
with different functionality.
It is planned to bring writing of stream and draft to DTC, but please
understand that this is nor a priority, neither does this mean that such
files can always be successfully written to disk. IPFs are not only
analysed, they contain information on how the data is going to be written
(instead of all other formats known to us which store data how it was read).
It is easy to tell how data will be read back after it was written, but not
how it was written, if you only know how it reads back.
The Software Preservation Society is working closely with archives around
the world and does offer inspection of data and generation of IPFs as a free
service. This service is limited by the time available for this task.
Q: Why isn't the Analyser available to the public for free, too?
A: Because it's a very special product that was created over the last
decade. Many many many man-hours of work went into the Analyser. In the
hands of a preservationist it's a powerful tool, but will be totally
unusable for the unexperienced user. Think of an IDE for C++ or similar. If
you can't write programs (=understand MFM and other variants of disk coding)
even the most advanced IDE will be useless. It is very easy to produce
broken IPFs if you do not know what you are doing. The result would be a
world full of broken IPFs or IPFs made from modified sources that would be
"disguised" as genuine.
Therefore it requires a huge amount of support to train new people on how to
use it. This takes much time, time we would spend on playing with our kids,
going to the cinema or having a good time with friends. It is not meant to
sound ignorant or arrogant, but it is a high class product for a very small
niche and people needing it can afford buying it. This will not only
compensate us for the time spent, but also bring some revenue for further
development and preservation in general.
Because of the above the product does come with a protection device (dongle)
that does contain the actual licence. We therefore can't give out demos
easily. But: If you think you should have it because you want / can help
please do not hesitate to contact us. Asking is always allowed.
- end quote from FAQ-
I have an interest in archiving, but I'm also an avid tinkerer with old
hardware and often need to generate "real" diskettes from a sector image.
Some of the machines I would need to do this for:
Northstar hard-sector
Amiga 5.25 and 3.5
C64 (GCR)
Apple 2 and 3 (GCR)
Intel MDS system (M2FM)
...
etc.
I have technical means for all of the above now, but they are inconvenient
and/or require dragging out and setting up something particular to that
one operation. "One stop" shopping would be great.
If the unit is capable of doing this, please advise?
Steve