Re: introducing peekbot

["Charlie" <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net>]

"jonnosan" <jonnosan@gmail.com> wrote in message 
47982d58-f7ad-4168-8ea7-a76fb6d0e710@x16g2000prn.googlegroups.com">news:47982d58-f7ad-4168-8ea7-a76fb6d0e710@x16g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
> peekbot is an attempt to make vintage computing artifacts visible to
> the modern intarweb.It is a web proxy that allows navigation through
> online collections of disk images. For disk images in formats which
> peekbot understands, the file system contained on that disk image can
> be explored.
>
> Many of the common file types found in the file systems can be
> converted to a format that can be viewed in a browser.For example,
> tokenised BASIC files can be listed as ASCII, or (some) old graphic
> formats converted to PNG.There is also a track/sector viewer, and any
> file found on a disk image can be viewed as a hex dump.
>
> peekbot is based on ripxplore, a ruby library for identifying and
> extracting data from disk images [ripxplore is
> a substantial reworking of dsktool - I have attempted to make it much
> more modular, to allow plug-ins to be developed for different file
> systems and file types. It also now understands C64, Atari and TRS80
> disk images and file systems, whereas dsktool was Apple 2 specific]
>
> here's some simple steps to try it out:
>
> 0) go to the peekbot home page - http://peekbot.jamtronix.com/
> 1) click on "Apple 2 image collections mirrored at apple2.org.za" from
> the list of disk image archives
> 2) click on "ftp.apple.asimov.net/" under "Navigation Options"
> 3) click on "images/" under "Navigation Options"
> 4) click on "communications/" under "Navigation Options"
> 5) click on 'explore' to the left of
> 'hacking_construction_set.dsk.gz' (under 'Peekable Images'), to get a
> list of
> all files on that disk.
>
> From that files list, you can
> - click on 'PNG' to the left of 'HCS Title' (under "files") to see
> the HCS Logo as a PNG
> - click on 'LISTING' to the left of 'HCS BOOT' to see the Applesoft
> BASIC listing
> - click on 'TEXT' to the left of 'HCS DOCS' (under "files") to see
> the HCS AppleText docs as ASCII
>
>
> ######## HELP WANTED #########
>
> peekbot is very much a work in progress. I am putting this version out
> now as a 'proof of concept', and to see if anyone finds it intersting
> enough to help work on it.
>
> Areas where assistance would be most valuable:
>
> 1) web design. peekbot uses camping, with markaby + css for layout, so
> hopefully someone with css chops could make it look much slicker
> without too much effort. I'm sure the UI and navigation could be much
> improved as well - I am a humble backend hack so would be very happy
> to work with anyone who knew how to make a web app easy to use.
>
>
> 2) plug-ins for image formats (especially .sdk), file systems, and
> native file types. My goal for ripxplore is to have everything in 100%
> native ruby for maximum portability, and the framework is convoluted
> and not yet well documented, so it's probably a bit early for anyone
> but a masochist ruby freak to try writing a plugin unaided, but I
> would be happy to work with anyone interested, or else if someone has
> some images they'd particularly like to see peekbot interpret, and can
> give specs or source code i can convert, that would be great too.
> There is a heap of opporunity for the C64 particularly, including
> converters to detect various image formats and render as PNG.
>
> 3) disassemblers. Currently ripxplore includes a 6502 disassembler,
> and I am debugging a Z80 diassembler for a future release. However it
> is not a very intelligent disassembler, and makes no attempt to
> determine what parts of a program file are code and what is data.
>
> 4) documentation - how to use the website, how to use ripxplore for
> specialised conversion and extraction tasks (e.g. I have a ruby script
> that generates a PDF map with room names & contents for a "Sword
> Thrust" disk) &
> how to write a plugin.
>
> If you are interested in any of the above, contact me vie email
> (address is at the bottom of the peekbot home page) or via this
> newsgroup.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonno

I like it!  Nice work.

Charlie