Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Doc Shipley]

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