3 Nov
2011
3 Nov
'11
5:54 p.m.
On 3 Nov 2011, Philip Pemberton wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the
impression that:
1) The IPF library was read-only
2) There were no publicly-available documents covering the IPF file format
3) No documents have been released as part of the source dump (thus satisfying (2))
1) The nature of IPF is read-only. It is a mastering format, there would be no point
writing to it.
2) We've only recently opened the source (which is pretty well documented), so give us
some time... It's something we want have done, sure. Either that or done by somebody
else could help so we can concentrate on actually preserving stuff. Maybe you want to help
with that Phil? Give a little back? It shouldn't be that hard from the source, but
would take time, sure.
3) See (2)
Thus, creating an IPF would involve
reverse-engineering the format from
the source code (which I have not examined closely, but appears to be
Reverse-engineering from the source code? I don't really know what you mean by that.
Ah... you want to write IPFs... I don't think that really needs "reverse
engineering". You need to try and understand how the code works. It's not simple
for sure - that is because it was a very hard problem to solve (mastering disks as they
were originally on commercial Trace hardware, with scripted writing).
somewhat Windows-centric and lightly commented based
on the few files
There are also ports for Linux, Mac and AmigaOS in there too.
Seems a lot of work. I'd rather put the effort
into writing a .MFI (MESS
Floppy Image) R/W library...
Yes, exactly. IPFs are intended for a specific purpose - preserving commercial games as
they were originally produced. For many other uses, like backups of a personal collection,
it is probably better to use a simpler format.
* DiscFerret captures data at a much higher
resolution (approx. 4x
Kryoflux's peak rate, and twice the Mk4 Catweasel). This means you can
image hard drives (ST506 type) and 2.88MB floppy discs, with suitable
adapter cables.
Yep, that is cool. We don't currently have much interest in imaging hard drives I have
say. We are working in the area of perfect commercial software preservation, it's
built specifically to help with that.
* DiscFerret has full support for both hard-sectored
and soft-sectored
media, including reading individual sectors. CW could do this too, AIUI.
Yeah, I'd like to see this added to KryoFlux. The thing holding it up is that
don't have disks to test.
Kieron