8" floppy project

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sun Aug 8 22:31:19 2004

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 21:34:24 +0100 (BST)
ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:

> > > 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.
>

Not to start a flame-war, but we're talking about methods using various
equipment to archive and/or analyze foreign diskettes. 'Running an
MS-DOS machine' amounts to having one somewhere in the shop you can use
for this kind of specialized work. If you detest Microsoft, use DR-DOS
or FreeDOS or any of the alternatives. Obviously nobody (or barely
anybody) 'runs' an MS-DOS machine as a primary workstation in this day
and age. It would make sense, though, to recognize that a machine like
that is useful for a few occasional purposes and not 'boycott' them for
some high-and-holy reason.
Received on Sun Aug 08 2004 - 22:31:19 BST