Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

They should try Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk:

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm

This is used by bitsavers to preserve old data from 8 inch floppy disks. I was able to write an emulator for a Motorola 6800 "Exorciser" that could boot disks saved this way.




I don't think it handles IBM formatted disks. You can use it with you have an FDC that does some handling for you. Problem is that those disks are practically 'punchcards-on-disk' for mainframes, not PC-based at all. Oddly enough, it does know about paper tape.

Then again, OmniDisk can't autodetect it initially either, so perhaps the whole concept of reading mainframe formatted disks and mainframe encoded data on a non-mainframe system was rather problematic anyway.


It does, IBM format is the most basic floppy standard (same for ASCII and EBCDIC). I watched the video again- they did use ImageDisk for the bulk of the transfer- you can see it flashed a few times (13:46 is one point). It's the mostly blue screen with the red bar on the top.


Re-watching the video and re-reading the comments, this makes sense. I probably was too focused on the subtitles I had on.

It is pretty interesting that while older formats can be somewhat obscure these days, because the format was much simpler it can be 'understood' by one person much easier.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: