11 Aug
2004
11 Aug
'04
7:13 a.m.
On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, David V. Corbin wrote:
At the minimal the archive would consist of every byte
in the stream. Since
there is the potential for loarge areast of "no-data", previous posters
suggested using the intel format which consists of an offset [address] and a
number of data bytes represented in ascii hex characters.
Ok, I see now. This makes absolute sense. It also somewhat effects a
form of implicit compression, which is good. By explicitly specifying
where the data goes on the medium, you could then leave out any sections
that are just zeroes.
HOWEVER, this makes it very difficult to use the imagefile on an emulator.
To use the floppy disk example again, if the emulator wants Track 14
Sector 8 (or Block 417) but it has not been explicitly laid out in the
imagefile because it was originally zeroes, then the emulator, if poorly
designed, may crap out.
Hmmm.
One way around this is to parse the imagefile into memory first, and then
have the emulator use the memory image as a virtual disk drive.
Hmmm.
Definitely something to discuss more.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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