Date   : Wed, 02 Jun 1999 22:17:01 +0100
From   : Steven Flintham <steven@...>
Subject: BBC software to grab DFS disc images

I'm thinking of (gradually!) copying all of my BBC discs onto my PC's
hard disc, so that I don't need to worry about them dying of old age
and so that I can use them conveniently in an emulator. Most of them
are DFS (only 40T SS as well), so I thought I might as well store them
as straight disc images - IIRC there's a `standard' format (.ssd/.dsd
extension) for this. Assuming I'm not imagining it:

a) Is there any documentation on these formats around?

b) Has anyone got a program already written which will run on a BBC
and create a file on one drive which is the disc image of a disc in
another drive? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but if I don't
have to write it myself I stand less chance of getting the format
wrong and having to munge all my images to make them compatible with
emulators later on.

Apologies if this information is readily available and I missed it; I
did check the BBC Lives! web site but there didn't seem to be anything
of this kind on there. (I imagine question a) could be answered by
downloading all the emulators which support this format and looking at
either the source or the accompanying documentation, but that seems a
bit OTT.)

While I'm asking, is there any similar `standard' for ADFS discs? I
don't have many of them, but I'd still like to keep permanent copies
of them, and if possible I'd like the images to be emulator-friendly.
(Most of them are in S format, so there'd be no problem with fitting
the disc image onto a BBC disc. L format discs could be tricky without
a hard disc. :-) )

Thanks in advance.

Steven