Re: Apple II / i'm fEDDup: now *really* backup your diskettes!

[Stavros Karatsoridis <skaratso@gmail.com>]

On Oct 4, 3:27 pm, Linards Ticmanis <ticma...@gmx.de> wrote:
> On 10/03/2012 11:43 PM, Antoine Vignau wrote:
>
> > It copies DOS 3.3 or unrecognized disks as .DSK files and Pascal, ProDOS and CP/M disks are .PO files
>
> Just a little rant from the sideline: Why not store *all* 5.25 inch disk
> images as .DSK in DOS-Order. IMHO the whole "order" thing adds nothing
> but confusion to disk image files, and it adds nothing but failure-prone
> heuristic "guessing" code to software that handles disk images.
>
> DOS-Order isn't any better or worse than ProDOS-Order (or
> Block-Header-Order for that matter). For storing any kind of unprotected
> image, no matter the OS it was formatted with, any order works, provided
> you still remember which one it was when the time comes to use that
> image. But DOS-Order is by far the most common way for 5.25 so I'd say
> just use that and be done with it.
>
> Or is there any noticeable software that can't handle ProDOS images in
> DOS Order format?
>
> --
> Linards Ticmanis

The problem isn't really 5.25" disk images per se, but ProDOS volumes
can be up to 32 MB in size, and there is no way that a "DOS order"
image can handle something like that. It just doesn't make any sense.
The same is true of 800K 3.5" disk images as well. Since ProDOS order
images have to be supported anyways for volumes greater than 140K,
support has to be there for it regardless of whether DOS order ProDOS
disks work or not.