Brutal Deluxe's holidays project 3: EDD/SST and NIB images

[Toinet <antoine.vignau@laposte.net>]

Hi All,

Third project of Brutal Deluxe during the summer holidays for the
Apple IIs: EDD/SST and NIB images.

Or how to make NIB images simpler than ever ;-) I have tons of disks
and existing NIB software do not satisfy me at all.

At that time, the following features are included (just like EDD
does):
- Copy 1 to 35 tracks with a step of 1, 1/2 or 1/4 track,
- Capability to synchronize tracks,
- Automatic nibble count management.
- Create NIB images based on the previous three options above,
- Create real disks from NIB images,
- ProDOS 8-based.

The drawbacks:
- Each track is $1C00 bytes long, as opposed to the more restricted
$1A00 bytes per track that SST creates,
- As 1/2 or 1/4 track options are available, NIB images can be larger
than the original NIB images created by SST,

The options:

- Use a similar NIB format as SST.
  I have to admit I dislike that idea in the sense that we would lose
the 1/2 or 1/4 track options and limit to (the vast majority of) 16-
sec disks. Spiralling disks or some 18-sec disks may not work.
  On the contrary, that would offer compatibility with the current
emulators. Unless NIB images are encapsulated on a 2MG file that would
include the following information: first track (0), last track (34),
step (1, 1/2 or 1/4) and track length ($1C00)

- Create an Ethernet ADT version of it
  I would like to see that one released by the author of ADTPro but
the program takes a lot of memory space (program from $0800 to $38FF,
data from $4000 to $AFFF). The path to take would be to take out the
read/analyze/write routines of the program and include them in ADTPro.
Unless about 4KB is sufficient ;-)

- Find a name to the software...

Several other "cool" features have already been brought to our
attention by Jean-Marc Boutillon for his DotNIB project on his
dedicated page on http://boutillon.free.fr/

A first public beta version will be made available at the end of the
month on our website,


As for the other projects, your comments are welcome.

Antoine Vignau
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutal-deluxe.fr/