josephoswaldgg@hotmail.com wrote:
One of my own pet projects is to get an ADT-like program to transfer nibble-counted tracks for programs like Flight Simulator which cram "extra-long" tracks onto the disk. Then, I'd use my own custom NIB-processing tools to normalize the disk as much as possible for emulation.
Extra long tracks were accomplished by speeding up the drive when writing the disk to fit more bits on the media. (Faster = closer together = more per track.)
It's a DOS decision to break up the stream into manageable chunks. If you don't use the standard DOS but rather a custom routine to access the disk, then sectors can be as long as necessary.
So a NIB image of a disk with 'long tracks' would work if you removed the protection. All a long track has is more valid bytes. There is plenty of room in the NIB format for the maximum number of bytes ever crammed into a long track. :)
I remember Prince of Persia which read one really big sector per track and got '18 sectors' worth of data per track. (4.5k instead of the normal 4k per track.)
If it wasn't for the protection routine built in to verify the disk, any bit copier would have duplicated it without any problems at all and a NIB would work.
Thanxk, Ed