Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Doc Shipley <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Wed Aug 11 00:36:42 2004

Teo Zenios wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf_at_siconic.com>
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:18 AM
> Subject: Re: Let's develop an open-source media archive standard
>
>
>
>>Platforms do not figure into the specification I have in mind. It would
>>be a specification. It could then be implemented on whatever platform
>>anyone cared to. As long as the various applications follow the spec,
>>images will be able to be stored where ever. Apple ][ users could store
>>Amiga images if they wanted to.
>>
>>--
>>
>>Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
>
> Festival
>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----
>
>
> Specifications are nice, but unless you get the people who still have the
> hardware and software to join in it will get nowhere. The problem is getting
> the people to follow the standards and image their disks, once the images
> have been collected you can do what you want with them and not worry about
> the platform they came from. CAPS software uses an Amiga 1200 platform to
> get images from the original disks, Commodore 64 users can grab images from
> a 1541/1571 drive connected to a PC running DOS connected to the drive with
> a xe1541 cable and some software. As far as I know there is no hardware that
> can precisely read all of the different disk formats and sizes let alone
> deal with all copy protection methods (such as laser hole in the media
> itself). You still need the original hardware of the platform it ran on to
> get the images.. so you have to get the people of the different platforms
> behind you (good luck).

   I have an Atari Mega STE, a Commodore 128D with 1541, several Amigas
(but no Amiga 3.5" HD drives, dammit), an Amiga Catweasel, an AMAX-II
and Mac 5.25" external drive, and 68K Macs with 800K and 1.4MB floppy
drives. I have PCs with 5.25" and 3.5" drives that will do any of the
PC-compatible formats. Linux, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, NetBSD, and Win32 OSs
available.

   I also have various Alphas, VAXen and PDP-11s with RX02, RX50, RX33,
and RX23 disk drives, as well as the later 2.88MB 3.5" floppy drive.

   Add in RS/6000s with their various 3.5" formats ("PC standard" 720K,
1.44MB and 2.88MB, right?) and an Indigo with a known-good Floptical drive.

   I don't write code, I don't know doodoo about floppy hardware that I
didn't learn here on CC, and I'm not always real quick to get projects
done, but I'm damned good at beta testing. I can break most anything,
but I can always tell *how* I broke it, and I can usually tell you where
and why it broke.

   Long-winded way to say "I wanna help!" :)


        Doc
Received on Wed Aug 11 2004 - 00:36:42 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:33 BST