Xerox 820 system disks in Teledisk format?

Wow - a surprising amount of response for what I thought was a small and simple point (ok - so I wasn't QUITE as subtle as I could have been :-) I recall Chuck G. one time mentioning something along the lines of having had more crap about TeleDisk over the years then he cared for (sorry - don't have the exact quote handy), and I must say I completely understand what he was talking about - I do get a lot of very positive and encouraging correspondance about ImageDisk, but I also get strange and incomprehensible "feedback" ... some people seem angry that my free utility does not do something they want to do (in most cases accompanied by a fundamental lack of understanding about the hardware limitations, real standards, and the "unpleasentness" in attemptng to perform these functions under "modern" operating environments). I've even gotten complaints that ImageDisk has "too much" documentation. You really can't please all of the people all of the time. So please do forgive me if I get my "back up" about comments like "why on earth didn't you support my custom hardware"... I've never owned or even seen a Compaticard of any flavor ... If the four standard drives don't cut it for you, you can use an alternate standard controller (I allow any address)... Or use the system I use which is bring the 'B' interface out to a 36-pin 'D' connector on the back, with cables and adapters to allow you to connect pretty much any drive you like. I've documented this in a fair bit of detail on my pages - it works really well! Or - as noted earlier, you can change the program to "do what you want". Btw - if you really want a "TeleDisk" image, by all means write a converter. I don't promote TeleDisk because NTI and Chuck have openly asked that it be retired --- but I've documented the TeleDisk archive format to the best detail that I have been able to uncover, and I've provided tools to translate TeleDisk to ImageDisk - and tools which manipulate ImageDisk files ... It should not be a terribly difficult job to write a converter to go the other way - the information is available... Indeed it should be quite possible - I've thought about it, but I just don't have time or pressing need (My main interest in in long- term archiving of representative images of original media, with an emphasis on detailing the archive formats so that the ability to extract usable data from those images will not be lost "no matter what"). But why wait for me to do it ... The ImageDisk archive format is openly documented and has been placed in the public domain. Sample code to manipulate those archives has been made available. If you want a Hardware Virtual Drive that works with ImageDisk images - then by all means, build one. It would be an interesting project, and given that similar devices have already been done, definately not impossible. An even simpler approach might be to use IMDU to reformat the image into a raw binary file - I haven't looked at them, but I would guess that at least some of the Hardware Virtual Drives that have already been done can already work with a raw binary image. Or write a tool to reformat the image into whatever archive format is required by the HVD. Everything I've done has been made available - if you want the torch carried faster or further - please pick it up and run! You bet Eh? We've been clubbed over the head with hockey sticks so much that we are all unreasonble hosers... For fun we grab our chainsaws and kill trees... (Ok, I did happen spend a few hours behind a saw this afternoon, but I was for the most part clearing deadwood which as is hinted at by the name ... was already dead). Actually, it's been posted for quite a long time - well over a year. Some of you may recall a while back when I took a fair bit of flak here in this list because I didn't want to post the sources until I felt the system was through the bulk of it's initial development and fairly stable. Various people insisted that the program was "useless" without them, and talked about modifications and enhancements that they wanted to be able to do. Since posting the sources, I've not seen one shred of evidence that anyone has done anything with them. I've not seen any enhanced or modified versions, submissions, bug fixes or any other indications ... I don't know what happened to all the people who so desperately needed them - perhaps their navels are just TOO interesting... (thanks AL). Dave -- dave09 (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