8" floppy project

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun Aug 8 15:34:24 2004

> > But as a file-format geek, I always thought a central part of the
> > nut to crack was a metafile format. Archiving real-world antique
> > floppies means some of them are going to have bad sectors. (Let's
> > leave copy-protection errors aside for a moment.) You need an
> > archiving file format that can record the fact of the known error.
> > It would also be handy to have a way to store corresponding info
> > such as a description of the disk's contents, as if you'd be
> > able to store the label along with the archived disk image.
>
> This already exists since more than 10 years now and is called TeleDisk,

As far as I know the format of a Teledisk archive file has never been
officially documented. IMHO that makes it totally unsuitable to use as a
portable archibe format. And I don't think it covers things like GCR
recording, sectors with headers recorded at a different density to the
data, hard sectored disks, and so on.

> also try AnaDisk to analyse foreign disks, both programs can be found
> everywhere on the net.

Only if you happen to run an MS-DOS PC.

-tony
Received on Sun Aug 08 2004 - 15:34:24 BST