Re: EDD Plus Project

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

"Bryan Parkoff" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:478a938a$0$7200$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Charlie,
>
>> While I agree with your assessment of DSKs and NIBs, I believe that 
>> emulator writers won't support a new format unless it is very easy to 
>> generate the new images.  My reasoning comes from the fact that there has 
>> been such a format (FDI) for some time and as yet I know of no Apple II 
>> emulator that supports it.  And this even though FDIs are not all that 
>> difficult to produce.
>> It's that "chicken and egg" thing.  No one wants to create images if they 
>> can't be used anywhere and no one wants to support a format that doesn't 
>> have any images available.
>
>    Please tell me more.  What do FDI stand for?

FDI stands for Formatted Disk Image.

> Is it advanced than NIB format?

Yes, much more advanced than NIB.

> I have been studying Disk II controller and I want to emulate it using 
> Logic Sequencer ROM instead of basic DSK format and NIB format.
>    I intend to write it near the future.  I am interested.

You can find more about it here:

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi

and the actual FDI specification here:

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/files/FDISPEC.pdf

Basically what you need is:

An MS-DOS PC with a 5.25 inch and/or 3.5 inch floppy drive and PCI slots.
A registered copy of disk2fdi (the free version won't make FDIs).
A "high speed" PCI parallel card.
A two wire cable available from the site above or you can easily make one 
yourself.

This set-up allows you to read Apple ][ disks and create FDI files.  FDI 
files are very large and it takes quite a long time to create one but you 
can also create standard .do images and .dc (3.5 inch diskcopy) images.

Charlie