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Re: Looking for "Ultima II" .nib images



Andy McFadden wrote:
sicklittlemonkey <Nick.Westgate@gmail.com> wrote:

I did see this a year or so ago, and my interest was piqued.
But it seems to only support DOS format 5.25" Disk ][ tracks.


The "raw" output supports 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and is completely
independent of the actual format.  It stores the tracks as three
overlapping signals, one of which is the index marker, so it's possible
to determine track length and synchronization precisely.


FDI seems quite a 'foreign' format, though of course I hope
that one day it's supported in Apple emulation. And adding
an entirely new format seems like overkill.


CiderPress can convert it to ".nib" and TrackStar ".app", the latter
being preferred because it preserves track lengths.  It's still not
enough -- it should preserve sync byte info -- but it's better than .nib.

The trouble with raw FDI is that it's expensive to process and very
difficult to write.  It doesn't make much sense for emulators to support
it directly.

Agreed.  It's complex to preserve all *possible* information on
a disk, particularly when it usually isn't relevant.  ;-)

But I also think that pushing for a new emulator-supported format
that handles less than 99.9% (100% is always a problem ;-) of all
protected disks isn't worth the effort.

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it is seriously underused."