Date : Fri, 31 Jan 1997 10:05:20 +0100
From : Robert Schmidt <rsc@...>
Subject: Re: Disk image formats?
Mike Tomlinson wrote:
>
> I've been experimenting with Tom Seddon's BBC emulator, and have been
> able to transfer disks from the BBC by reading them with FDC and
> Anadisk, then converting them.
Lucky you to have a PC on which BBC disks can be read! *envy*
> Are there any moves to standardise on a particular image file format for
> different emulators? I remember a discussion here recently about how
> best to preserve boot and file information, but formed the impression
> that was just to make it easier to transfer files back to the Beeb.
Apparently it turned out this way because people developed there
emulators individually, and since most authors don't receive much in the
form of compensation for their time spent, naturally they're happy once
their emulator is rolling.
Wouter Scholten's format was proposed as a sort of a common denominator
for BBC files. It is very flexible, files can be interpreted on any
system, each BBC file is available individually, the information about
each file is available in a readable and text-editable format, and
very importantly, BBC file names are not limited by the host system's
limitations. It is very easy to convert such collections of files to
any other format. I adopted this format as the standard for my BBC
software archive, and have been very happy with it.
Also, I've made the decision to provide each software title in it's own
ZIP file, instead of storing full disks in this archive format - also
for convenience.
Disk images, in comparison, are inherently hard to work with - even on a
BBC or in an emulator.
No emulators support this format yet (though I seem to recall that Tom
was considering it for his next release).
> The reason I ask is that I have about 1000 DFS discs with various games,
> roms, utilities, educational programs etc. on which I would be glad to
> put up on my web site, if I had any idea which format would be most
> useful.
People will tell you different things, according to which emulator they
prefer, or if they're using a real BBC. As a web page maintainer
myself, I defintely prefer my archive format - and I did try maintaining
an archive of disk images for a while...
> I was thinking of using FDC or Anadisk to read the discs and then
> converting them to DFFS format, then zipping them using -eX (extra
> compression) before putting them up.
DFFS can't be converted to anything else (yet).
--
Robert Schmidt <rsc@... >
Software Developer / Vingmed Sound tel +47 67124237 fax +47 67124355
Private tel +47 22352293 WWW http://www.nvg.unit.no/~rsc
The law forbids both rich and poor to beg, steal and sleep under
bridges.