Archiving Software

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Archiving Software
>   From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
>   Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:01:51 +0000
>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>M H Stein wrote:
>> Aside from bootable system disks, for which Dave Dunfield's imaging program
>> seems to be a much better solution than Teledisk, what's the best way to 
>> archive software in a way that makes it as universally useable as possible and 
>> downloadable/emailable?
>
>ImageDisk seems like a definite step in the right direction - it's certainly 
>done a brilliant job when I've tried it.
>
>What it now needs IMHO is multi-platform support so that you don't *have* to 
>use DOS and so that it can be used by more people. (Whether a Windows version 
>is viable I don't know; certainly Linux seems to give you all sorts of ways to 
>reach the bare hardware though - presumably *BSD would be the same)
>
>Other than that it seems a viable tool to use - the file format has a comment 
>field of unlimited length for any useful metadata, and is able to record where 
>bad spots were on the original disk.

My solution for CP/M disk so I can work at the file level is to use one of 
David's emulators and serial down/up load the content using xmodem to either
a copy of Procom running on the same box or to a real CP/M crate.  The SIM
to Procom thing has caveats (I had to fire up a win98se box) as NT is to fussy 
about touching the metal.  However, once i had the w98se engine going I had to
loop com1 to com2 (real wire!) worked well using the Horizon Sim.  The first
case was Sim to real CP/M machine and that neatly sidesteps the old two systems
common OS incompatable media.


>> For example, I have original distribution diskettes for CP/M Wordstar, 
>> Supercalc, etc. on 8" disks. Obviously images wouldn't be very useful for 
>> someone with only 5" drives or no 8" drive on the PC; on the other hand, 
>> a DOS ZIP file of the files on that disk would have to be copied/converted 
>> back to a CP/M format disk somehow. 
>
>Well the ImageDisk file format's public - I suppose there's nothing to stop 
>someone writing utilities to pull data out of an image at the file level, then 
>spitting them across a serial link with a terminal app to the original 
>hardware. Or converting them back into a 5.25" image file, say.

If you want to get/put files on CP/M disks the problem is one level more 
complex.  To do image manipulation of CP/M disks the utility must understand
CP/M filesystem AND know the know the internal format of the media imaged.
For example the internal format of a single density NS* CP/M disk is layed
out different from a Compupro CP/M image internally.  Reason for that is CP/M
applies allocation blocks of differing granularity that is disk size dependent
and also sector skewing.  So to read or write the internal file you need to run
the equivilent of a CP/M BDOS and disk portion of the BIOS.  Not that difficult
but certainly more effort.  The ugly part is getting the CP/M disk parameter
table and sector skew data into the tool for each imaged cp/m disk.

>Getting the data off (and knowing you've captured it all) and onto modern 
>media is probably more important than what tools someone may use in the future 
>to interpret the data. Providing it's all captured of course!

Without a doubt.

>> So, how are the rest of you dealing with this?
>
>Burying heads in sand I suspect :) I've finally got a PC that'll handle FM 
>data (I think it was the 7th one I tried!), so I can start imaging my own 
>collection. Luckily I just have soft-sectored MFM/FM disks here; no 
>hard-sectored stuff, GCR encoded media etc.

For NS* hard sector a real NS* and the Sim work fine.  For others I have
real systems and serial ports.

>I need to make the host machine dual-boot DOS/Linux so I can just use DOS to 
>the actual reading/writing, then Linux for everything else (archival, any 
>processing of the files, taking advantage of being able to use longer 
>filenames etc.).
>
>I'll give DOSEMU a try under Linux to see if it'll run ImageDisk, but I 
>suspect it won't allow the necessary direct access to the hardware... but I'm 
>happy to dedicate a box to disk imaging, so it doesn't really matter if the 
>Linux floppy subsystem gets clobbered in the process. I suspect that ImageDisk 
>won't even run under DOSEMU though.

Dos is not as bothersome as full out winders. though I've found my W9x boxes
do this well enough and as demonstrated I can run sim to procom so sim to sim
may be possible on one box and with two boxes no question.


Allison