Archiving Software

[Tony Duell]

> 
> 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.

It's a pity the source code hasn't been released. I really don't like 
using programs that I've not read through...

The problem then comes that I am likely to write my own programs to do 
the same sort of job (as I did for HP calculator LIF disks, albeit before 
imagedisk was released), and that will add yet another archive format...

> 
> 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)

At least on this old version of linus (and I hope it's not been taken 
out), the fdrawcmd Ioctl() allows you to do just about anything the FDC 
chip is capable of.

> 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.
> 
> 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!

I would think that any archive format that is complete enough to allow a 
working version of the disk to be recreated for the original machine 
would also allow individual files to be extracted given the right tools 
(if only because recreating the a disk for the original machine, then 
using it on that machine would allow you to do just that).

-tony