Subject: .DSK / File maintenance from the host CLI
Message-ID: <378DC035.2581135@rocketmail.com>
From: William Robert Night <wnight@rocketmail.com>
Organization: MTS Systems
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Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 11:03:21 GMT
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A few years back, (five or so) I wrote a series of utilities that
would allow for basic maintenance of .DSK images from the host
computer.

A basic rundown (all operations are on Dos 3.3 disks only)

Diskread - Reads files from .DSK, stores them seperately
Diskwrite - The reverse. Puts files back onto .DSK images
DiskFormat - Creates a blank .DSK image, and/or adds a DOS image
Translate - Takes a .fil (from DiskRead) and if the file is text
	or basic, translates it to a text file on the host system.
DosStrip - Reads (and saves) a variable size DOS image to
	use with DFormat
DiskWipe - Zeroes all slack space, makes .DSK images compress better

The purpose of these utilities was to allow emulators to be more
easily used. Ideally most A2 programs could be distributed as just a
.ZIP containing the files themselves and emulators could either use
the files directly, or a simple .BAT (or similar) file could merge
these files onto a .DSK with the DOS of your choice. Programs
consisting of many files could have all the slack removed to aid in
storage and transit.

I just found the EXEs for these utilities, and some source code,
recently, which revived interest. I'm going to reconstruct as much
as I can, and then open the project up, releasing the source code,
for other people to help with.

Things that I need to do.

Add support for ...
- Prodos
- 3.5" drives
- Virtual HDs (I think Apple PC uses these)
- DiskOrder and ???Order .DSKs, and switching between them.

Support for .NIB and other formats isn't likely because these
formats are commonly used for whole-disk programs with some sort of
copy protection. Not the type of image you want to be messing with,
and .NIB -> .DSK converters do exist for the bold.

I need to find out enough about Prodos to be able to load/store a
file, read and write a dos image, and navigate subdirectories.

After this, I can try to support 3.5" images, Virtual HDs, and other
things.

If anyone has a text file with the above prodos information (or can
scan and OCR 'Beneath Apple Prodos' from the relevant sections) it
would help a lot.

As soon as I can get the basic programs up and running, I plan on
releasing the C code, and perhaps handing development off to someone
else.

Any suggestions, or helpful docs or tips would be welcomed.


The BASIC -> textfile code is (according to my source notes)
partially cribbed from Paul Hollander, and all of my code (that
remains) was ANSIfied, and the docs rewritten by a helpful, C.E.A2
reader whose name I've lost.