19 Mar
2007
19 Mar
'07
5:09 p.m.
These
readme's may need updating as time goes by. Things like the fact
that some tool needs to run under a particular OS and not some future OS
that may be more common, needs to be passed on.
Is that not a problem for whoever's maintaining the tools? They're the ones
who dictate what platforms their tools will run on - it's not necessarily the
job of the archive maintainers to know this; they simply record what tool (and
hence what file format) was used to create their images. The burden's on the
individual users to search for something that will understand that format, and
then filter out results to get something that will work with their particular
hardware combination. from now i86 PC's have all declared dangerous
materials (brain damage etc.), and
can't be had - you might not be able to run
my tools - but given an incentive to
put some effort into it, the information is there to allow you to use other means.
(how that information will survive is another question - but at least I've made it
available which is the best I can do).
The last thing we want to do is lock up the archive in proprietary undocumented
formats.
e.g. I might have a site with a bunch of Superbrain
floppies on, all in
Imagedisk format. It's my job as maintainer of that archive (and participating
in the "global" distributed archive) to say what tool I used to create those
images when I publish them - but it's Dave's job as Imagedisk maintainer to
dictate what other platforms Imagedisk might run on now or in the future.
I think "dictate" is a string word - If someone wants to develop the tool for
another platform, I would be very supportive - however this hasn't happened
so far.
Sure, I might be helpful and (with Dave's
permission) put a few different
copies of Imagedisk on the site too and publish those so people can find them
- but I don't need to do any maintenance myself every time a new version of
Imagedisk comes out.
The sites should carry what tools and documentation can be made available
(ultimately ability to access the archived data will deternine it's acceptance).
Indeed - and it's easy to say "record as much
as possible". Problem then is
that it discourages archive owners from publishing content simply because it's
time-consuming to enter the metadata for the items that they're making
available. Getting the balance right is probably going to be tricky.
I'm not sure I agree with that. You don't need much metadata to be 1000%
more useful than none. I would not expect complete documentation on the
tool and archive formats to be included in each data image - but the type
of system it is for, the name and version of the tool, and a description of
what is in the image should be enough to get you going.
People pay $$$ for a CD that comes in an empty box with a little paper
saying "This is XXX put the CD in your drive" - surely we can do at least
as good as that.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html