Re: Nibble Images ...

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

Laine Houghton <laine@intergate.com> wrote:
> "Chris M" <chris@sorry.no.spam.com> wrote in message
> 4me870959eoaebfbshrptc806uaf7emav8@4ax.com">news:4me870959eoaebfbshrptc806uaf7emav8@4ax.com...
>> Can someone point me to software that lets me do a nibble copy of a
>> disk?  Any way to get the .nib image to a PC easily?
> 
> The server is a little slow.
> http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/apple2/utility/sst.zip


Some notes...

SST creates a fixed-length image of each track.  For this reason, nibble
counting is impossible to replicate.  You're probably out of luck for
track synchronization as well.  Each disk side turns into two, which are
then transferred like any other unprotected disk (e.g. with ADT over a
serial cable, or if you have the hardware, with ShrinkIt and AppleTalk).
The two images are then recombined by running SST in an emulator or
<shameless plug> with CiderPress.

It's a slow and somewhat painful process, but it'll work for disks with
simple forms of copy protection.

Sometimes it has been used to preserve the volume number embedded in the
sector headers of an otherwise unprotected disk.  In theory the volume
number can be stored on a "sector" image in 2IMG format, but I don't know
which emulators respect the value.

On the whole you're better off with a "cracked" disk than a nibble image.

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