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Re: Many File Formats: do they bother you?
On Sunday, July 15, 2012 8:08:18 AM UTC-5, schmidtd wrote:
> On 7/14/2012 5:14 PM, Hot Rod wrote:
> > On Saturday, July 14, 2012 3:04:11 PM UTC-5, schmidtd wrote:
> >>
> >> If you have a disk that has not been cracked, and you don't have
> >> cracking skills, and your disk isn't in the Computist Archive - there ya
> >> go. (I'm in that position right now, as it happens.)
> >
> > Hmm, OK, I'll bite - what disk do you have?
>
> Some random title about "your perfect shape" - something to do with
> women's clothing, and finding fashions that best fit particular body
> styles. It's probably a simple DOS hack, and I'll be able to find a
> Computist technique (probably COPYA with the "make-DOS-not-care" pokes)
> that will do the job.
>
> But that's not even the point. Not every system has a HotRod and LoGo
> to crack everything in sight. Sometimes we come across disks from
> computer systems that don't have anyone around that remembers anything
> any more. I worked with a couple of universities to read and
> reconstruct some disks from a BTOS/CTOS system - they used Kryoflux, who
> would speak to them because they were educational institutions, and I
> wrote and donated my own decoding software back to Device Side for the
> FC5025 who is a little more open (source) minded.
>
> So these "read the flux transitions" devices are useful for lots of
> situations where the original controller isn't around any more, and you
> still need to tease out the bits.
Oh, I definitely agree with that point, I was just curious about the slight tangent, thanks.
If you do reach the point of wanting to normalize this particular disk, a peek at track 0, sector 0 would be interesting, as would a nibble dump of track 0 (the tool called The Inspector can do a nibble read of a track and place it into hi-res page 0 at $2000, which can then be saved as a file). Looking that that data would provide a clue as to what format is being used. Or, if you did want to try a 'copya' ignoring errors, that 'poke' is $B942:18 (ok, that's from monitor).
]HR