16 Dec
2005
16 Dec
'05
12:01 p.m.
M H Stein wrote:
Aside from bootable system disks, for which Dave
Dunfield's imaging program
seems to be a much better solution than Teledisk, what's the best way to
archive software in a way that makes it as universally useable as possible and
downloadable/emailable?
ImageDisk seems like a definite step in the right direction - it's certainly
done a brilliant job when I've tried it.
What it now needs IMHO is multi-platform support so that you don't *have* to
use DOS and so that it can be used by more people. (Whether a Windows version
is viable I don't know; certainly Linux seems to give you all sorts of ways to
reach the bare hardware though - presumably *BSD would be the same)
Other than that it seems a viable tool to use - the file format has a comment
field of unlimited length for any useful metadata, and is able to record where
bad spots were on the original disk.
For example, I have original distribution diskettes
for CP/M Wordstar,
Supercalc, etc. on 8" disks. Obviously images wouldn't be very useful for
someone with only 5" drives or no 8" drive on the PC; on the other hand,
a DOS ZIP file of the files on that disk would have to be copied/converted
back to a CP/M format disk somehow.
Well the ImageDisk file format's public - I suppose there's nothing to stop
someone writing utilities to pull data out of an image at the file level, then
spitting them across a serial link with a terminal app to the original
hardware. Or converting them back into a 5.25" image file, say.
Getting the data off (and knowing you've captured it all) and onto modern
media is probably more important than what tools someone may use in the future
to interpret the data. Providing it's all captured of course!
So, how are the rest of you dealing with this?
Burying heads in sand I suspect :) I've finally got a PC that'll handle FM
data (I think it was the 7th one I tried!), so I can start imaging my own
collection. Luckily I just have soft-sectored MFM/FM disks here; no
hard-sectored stuff, GCR encoded media etc.
I need to make the host machine dual-boot DOS/Linux so I can just use DOS to
the actual reading/writing, then Linux for everything else (archival, any
processing of the files, taking advantage of being able to use longer
filenames etc.).
I'll give DOSEMU a try under Linux to see if it'll run ImageDisk, but I
suspect it won't allow the necessary direct access to the hardware... but I'm
happy to dedicate a box to disk imaging, so it doesn't really matter if the
Linux floppy subsystem gets clobbered in the process. I suspect that ImageDisk
won't even run under DOSEMU though.
cheers
Jules