🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BARRY.92Aug8111328@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu> barry@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu (Barry Kort) writes:
>
>Also, now that we have TeleDisk, shall we set up some FTP archives for
>PRO software?  Is this something that DECUS could be doing, so as to
>bypass the overhead of Media/Copying charges?
>
>Barry Kort

Teledisk is excellent for this purpose; I'm all for it.  My only complaint
(if you can even call it a complaint!) is that you can't disable the
compression completely to see just how much storage an arbitrary format
takes.  Note that this is not just the raw capacity of the disk, since this
program recreates the sector sizes and order on every track.  If it changes
any of these parameters, it informs you of the "unexpected" change in the
format's interleave, sector count, sector size, etc.  Any mixed situation
can be handled, as long as the basic notion of an MFM sector is obeyed.  This
implies certain header bursts, index and address mark possibilities, etc.
Since Sydex also sells a disk analysis-only program, I'm not surprised that it
does this much.  This is almost as good as COPYIIPC which in some cases is
rather stupid compared to teledisk.  In any case, that program can't make
images of the disks, just actual disks themselves.

I am going to attempt to copy a certain Broderbund copy-protected diskette
using teledisk.  When COPYIIPC is used on this disk, it claims that it 
uses some unusual copy-protection method (forget the name of it) and wants
to know if the descendent disk is intended for a PC or a TANDY machine.  I
don't understand what it's trying to do here, since the original is for
either machine, why not just copy it?  In any case, the descendent was tried
on the TANDY and it flunked, as did the the IBM-claimed version.  Neither has
been tried on a PC-compatible yet, but I imagine they won't work there either.
In any case, I further doubt that teledisk can copy it either, but I wanted
to know if anyone knows what Broderbund has done in light of this.  (They
have dropped this form of copy-protection paranoia on recent disks; this is
mostly out of curiousity, and now attempting to find the "limits" of what
Teledisk can do.)

The only problem with Teledisk is that it only creates files for which there
is the need of a PC to convert it back with.  There is no "native" DEC way
to accomplish the same thing.

Toward that end I am working on an RX50 program for DECmates that produces a
file in a robust printably-encoded format suitable for e-mail, etc.  The
format is already documented and the code written, except for a proper handler
for OS/278 which places limitations on what portions of the disk data are
addressable, etc.  The handler will lift that restriction.  By reading the
documentation and implementing it, the same format can be shared by either
PRO or Rainbow people as well.  The format is an "open" spec, and is basically
an attempt to replace uuencode or .BOO format with something more robust.  (It
includes protection against ">From" disease and an actual file checksum, no
white-space dependancies, no case dependencies, reasonable efficiency over
.HEX format, yet as robust when translated even through EBCDIC or Bitnet, etc.

The program is OS/8-family specific, so devices such as RX01 or RX02 can be
handled as well.  It is both whole device and also file oriented as necessary.
Interested parties should look at the file /kermit/d/k12enc.doc for more
details, including some of the thoughts that went into the design effort, as
well as rejected and wish-list notions, etc.

All Kermit-12 files are available at watsun.cc.columbia.edu in the
/kermit/d/k12*.* area via anonymous FTP.  PDP-8/DECmate assembler versions
of the ENCODE and DECODE programs are there as k12enc.pal and k12dec.pal
respectively.

cjl (author of Kermit-12)
lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu home of Kermit-12 and other fine Kermits.