On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Steve Thatcher wrote:
> what is wrong with making things easier? If a small amount of effort
> could be put out to make the image file have a more useful purpose then
> to ONLY be able to create media, why not? Your view seems to be to make
> all the emulators tyhat are currently available not work anymore because
> now they have to be modified to access an image file. My idea is to not
Steve,
All emulators for 8-bit machines today that I'm aware of use disk images.
Emulators like SIMH can read in individual files by, for instance, turning
the file into a virtual paper tape reader.
Your point, again, is taken, but so is Dwight's. I think it depends on
what emulators you spend most of your time playing with which defines your
outlook on this.
One problem I did think of after I sent my last message concerning this is
that if you do start including filesystems, people (probably emulator
writers in particular) will start to wonder why you didn't store the data
in binary. "Why," they ask, "do I have to convert the data from ASCII
when the file is fully capable of holding binary data?" Then you might
get some joker making unauthorized extensions to the spec with binary data
fields. Perhaps I'm getting carried away here, but I do see this as
potentially problematic.
> If you thought of an emulator is to BE the machine in absolutely all
> respects then yes who ever is writing it needs to understand the file
> structure intimately and we need to add even more to the specification
> to allow writing to an image file...
Isn't the specification itself a "how to" for writing an image file?
Also, the image file we are discussing is *NOT*, again, intended to serve
the emulators. Emulator usage is a SECONDARY concern.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Thu Aug 12 2004 - 12:25:20 BST