Re: EDD Plus Project

[sicklittlemonkey <Nick.Westgate@gmail.com>]

On Jan 13, 6:50 am, "Henry S. Courbis" <apl2research(a.t.)comcast.net>
wrote:
> Next I would like to ask who would be interested in the card if it was able
> to create Images of copy protected disks?  I know there's a version of
> Nibble out there that sort of does this already, but from my own past
> experience this program wasn't the simplest to use, didn't always work for
> some software and it also created two files for the Image.  My thoughts were
> to rewrite the EDD software to allow it to dump an Image file (preferably no
> larger then 140k) to Floppy or HDD which would then allows users to upload
> them to the Net or even store them on other media (backup) and restore at
> will.  I know there are 'purists' out there who like to have original
> versions of software as well as cracked versions.

Hopefully some of those lucky souls out there with large collections
of
original software would be interested in preserving it before it's
lost!
I'd certainly buy one, though I don't have much software.

You're talking about .NIB (format) and SST (modification of EDD)
above.
In terms of preservation they are not terribly useful, as they fail to
capture many protected disks properly. The person to involve in
supporting
a new EDD card and format is David Schmidt, as his ADTPro is the
standard
for capturing disks.

> Which begs the next question - Is there source code for the EDD v4.2
> software?  I just tried Sitehttp://www.apple2info.net/hardware/edd/edd.htm
> and they were down, although I don't believe they had the source code
> anyway.

A PDF of the source code was there. I'm sure someone will email it to
you.

> I recently spoke to Geoff Weiss about this software project and discussed
> some of the details.  I had an idea that it would be greatly beneficial, for
> obvious reasons, to try and write the Image feature of the software to save
> the Image as a .DSK file.  This would then fit on a 140k Floppy Disk as well
> as allow emulators to run these files.  Geoff doesn't believe that it would
> be possible to save the raw data stream in .DSK format because of all the
> extra data the EDD would be able to read unlike a standard .DSK creation
> program.  Any of you programmers out there have some comments about this
> possible .DSK Image addition to the EDD software?  I'm not that familiar
> with the .DSK format so I don't really know its limitations.  If .DSK isn't
> possible then I guess we'll create our own format unless someone can
> recommend something else that would be possible or suitable (.PO maybe?).  A
> custom format Image file would then require all Emulators to be rewritten if
> they wanted to support it.

DSK and NIB are woefully inadequate for archival purposes. A new
format is
required and has been discussed by a few individuals. My presonal
preference
is to extend .2IMG so that emulator writers are encouraged to support
it.
Any such new format will be larger even than .NIBs unless it is
compressed.

> Feel free to contact me directly (email and numbers on Web Site) or post
> comments here.  Thanks in advance for your time.  Any help would be MUCH
> appreciated and a big time saver!
>
> --
> Henry S. Courbiswww.ReactiveMicro.com
> Legacy Hardware and Support - Come take a look at what we have to offer!

Cheers,
Nick.