Defining Disk Image Dump Standard

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Wed May 31 08:37:08 2000

At 09:07 PM 5/30/00 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>That would certainly be one way to do it, but I think it's more feasible
>to attempt to do this by a combination of using the actual hardware and
>the software that does the archiving. The usefulness of archiving old
>diskettes is to make them available in perpetuity. Whether we are
>archiving them so that we can always create a physical disk from the
>archive to run on the original machine or use the archive as a "virtual
>diskette" for an emulator, having an actual disk image archived on a long
>term storage medium is my goal.

I agree. Before we get too deep in the details of the file format
(XML? Whew, so cutting edge. I was hoping for a simple tagged
format, with plenty of extensibility) it might be good to consider
how this file format will be used. Emulators, yes. Simple command
line tools to create disk images and manipulate files, yes. Simple
enough that an antique computer could read sectors and emit this
file format out the serial or parallel port, sure.

Never mind Emily Litella.

- John
Received on Wed May 31 2000 - 08:37:08 BST