Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Steve Thatcher]

to re-iterate, the separate sections I am proposing let the emulator do this very easily. Embed the format and the data together as pyhsical information and then the matter of extracting a file for emulation becomes difficult and not universal.

best regards, Steve Thatcher

-----Original Message-----
From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com>
Sent: Aug 11, 2004 2:30 PM
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:

> It was thus said that the Great Vintage Computer Festival once stated:
> >
> > HOWEVER, this makes it very difficult to use the imagefile on an emulator.
> > To use the floppy disk example again, if the emulator wants Track 14
> > Sector 8 (or Block 417) but it has not been explicitly laid out in the
> > imagefile because it was originally zeroes, then the emulator, if poorly
> > designed, may crap out.
>
>   Are you trying to create an archive format, or a format that is to be used
> by emulators?  I say skip the emulators and concentrate on archival
> purposes.  An emulator can then use the archive format to create a disk
> image in whatever internal format it requires.

This is exactly what I have in mind.  It's an archive format that can be
used by emulators.  The emulator would only need a front end that can
interpret the archive image into an internal data structure that it can
use.

>   Don't complicate the problem.

We're not trying to at least ;)

>   -spc (And don't try to become everything for everybody ... )

Not trying to do that, but we are trying to make it a format for
everything (or at least as much as possible that makes sense).

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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