Defining Disk Image Dump Standard

WARNING: There's evidence of "creeping featurism" here. That's what kills most standards, or at least manages to make them useless. Example: if your goal is to make the medium universally readable, why bother to put a source identifier into it? Who cares what system wrote it, so long as it can be read by any machine capable of dealing with the physical medium. It seems MUCH more important to choose a medium that's universally available and useable by a large number of systems. This would rule out such things as tape, whether paper or mylar/magnetic, diskettes, and most other magnetic media. The most important feature is ready availablility, right? If you can't go down to the 7-11 and buy it, it's not readily available, now, is it:? If you're defining an exchange medium, it doesn't matter whether your 1970's computer had that medium back when it was a pup. It doesn't matter that they used the little dectapes then if you can't go to CompUSA and buy them now and in the future. If you consider genuine requirements, you'll probably not end up with magnetic media, though portable hard disk might be worthy of consideration. You'll probably end up with something that requires nearly everyone to build an interface of some sort just to be able to use it. That's the problem you're trying to solve, doncha know ... If the guys who designed the systems had provided for this sort of interchange, you'd not have to solve the problem now. Dick. ----- Original Message ----- From: James Willing <jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 8:54 AM Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard sector