Date   : Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:50:00 +0100
From   : "BRAHMS" <dominic@...>
Subject: Re: Getting .SSD disk images onto a beeb...

I've got a (not quite finished) program that will unpack a .ssd (or .img) 
file.

The source code is available at 
http://www.brahms.demon.co.uk/software/bbc/index.html

(I use it to unpack the .ssd files and then transfer them accross and set 
the start/exec by hand
at the moment - I'm trying to come up with a better solution)

Hopefully I'll write something which will unpack the ssd file on the actual 
beeb, the C code in the reader I've written for linux is far too memory 
hungry for porting to the beeb at the moment.

The SSD/DSD spec just seem to be sector by sector dumps of the disc in one 
big file (I used a watford dfs manual I downloaded from somewhere to work 
out what was going on).

If there's more interest from the group I'd be happy to do more work on this 
and:
- extend the range of formats available
- make a beeb native version
- add a user friendly (i.e. non command line) interface
- any other suggestions

cheers

dom

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk@...>
To: "bbc" <bbc-micro@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 11:47 AM
Subject: [BBC-Micro] Getting .SSD disk images onto a beeb...


>
> OK, what are my options here?
>
> I've got a beeb (obviously), a PC running Linux, a copy of xfer for Linux, 
> and an xfer cable.
>
> I know both xfer and the cable work; I've used them before. I thought xfer 
> (v4) handled disk image transfer as well as single files, but I can't see 
> anywhere in the docs where it says this, let alone what image file formats 
> it supports at the PC end.
>
> As I'm running Linux, I think that rules out DFS explorer; I believe 
> that's Windows-only and there's no Linux port available?
>
> Omniflop is Windows-only too - although its web page hints that there are 
> tools for Linux (in which case I'm not aware of them - I know I can kick 
> the FDC chip into various modes from the shell, but AFAIK the SSD format 
> isn't a raw disk dump, so I still need some utility that understands the 
> format)
>
> To make matters worse, I have a feeling this PC - like most - won't write 
> FM data anyway (although it'll possibly read it OK; long time since I 
> tested this one) - so something that talks direct to the FDC hardware is 
> no use, and I really need a remote transfer util like xfer...
>
> Worst-case, who maintains the SSD/DSD spec? If that's published somewhere 
> I could write something quickly to rip the individual files out of the SSD 
> image under Linux, then xfer them across to a formatted floppy...
>
> cheers
>
> Jules
>
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