Date   : Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:52:48 +0100
From   : "Richard Gellman" <r.gellman@...>
Subject: Re: Moving PC-BBC

> HOWEVER, all the really popular discs (like Elite, Spy Hunter etc)
> always come in this SQUASHED format, designed for BBC emulators, not
> for writing to a BBC disc.

Squahed?

Um no ;P

The disc images are not sqashed, the explanation is far simpler.

Most games (or rather the files that make them up) do not fill up an entire
disc (or disc surface).
In fact, most of the smaller ones take up barely more than 32K of disc
space.
Using a disc image thats 200K in size when only 32K is used is pointless, so
the disc image is saved up to the last sector that contains any information.
I.E. at point after the last byte in the disc image is a point on an actual
floppy disc that had no relevant data on it.
So these disc images are not squashed, merely shortened.
If you must write them as whole 200K/400K images, find a simple program that
can add blank zeros on the end of the disc image file to pad it out to
200/400K

:)

-- Richard Gellman
www.rickynet.net/beebem <-- still working on it