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Consistancy in image format

AnonymousAnonymous
edited February 2013 in Site Issues
From my downloads I have seen it all, cue and bin, Nero propraity, plain iso,
and other formats. Myself a user (and advid retro pc/software tinkerer) find it
difficult when I have to roll the dice on weather or not the download is going
to be an iso. I don't have the time (nor money) to go and buy software to
convert someone's proprietary format Nero or bin and cue archived version of an
OS. I know this is kinda a lot but I can help with this, can someone (including
me) record and figure out which archives are in iso format and which need
tending to? Also FYI I have a copy of the BeOS 5.0 CD edition already converted
into a bootable iso, if anyone wants to talk to me about that...stitch? But with
my ant all I'm trying to say is consistency, please and if it has to be in
another format other than iso (iso preferred) at least do bin and cue...that is
all.

Comments

  • stitchstitch
    Any downloads that originally shipped on CD should either be an ISO image, or the archive will be the filesystem of the CD. Software that was distributed on floppy disk will generally have a few .IMA images within, which are raw dumps of the disk. Post direct links to downloads that are not this case.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    BeOS Pro 5.0 is cue and bin http://wdl1.winworldpc.com/Abandonware%20Operating%20Systems/PC/BeOS/BeOS%205.0%20Professional.7z

    Windows NT 4.0 "All in one" is in some nero format http://wdl1.winworldpc.com/Abandonware%20Operating%20Systems/PC/Microsoft%20Windows/Windows%20NT4/Microsoft%20Windows%20NT%204.0%20(All-in-One).7z I will look for more.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Just out of curiosity, I downloaded the above archives. The NT 4 image was very easy to convert to ISO. The BeOS image seems to have converted to ISO alright, but I don't really know anything about BeOS or it's requirements. I was able to boot off it in a VM and the file system seems to be intact.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    @Blue
    Yes, the BEos iso is fine, I was the one who created it -_- so of course it would be valid, as for conversion to iso what did you use? I don't want to spend money to convert the file to iso.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    One thing to watch out for is that ISO formats can't store audio tracks or multiple data tracks. In that case, at least use something that is freely downloadable like ImgBurn to make the images. (Also, I noticed in some cases 7Zip can actually get significantly extra compression from an extracted filesystem over that of compressing an ISO)

    Similarly, it is annoying to have to hunt down specific floppy disk image writing programs - and there are many of them. Off the top of my head there are Teledisk, ImageDisk, and some IBM disk writer for OS/2 that all create their own formats. And WinImage also has its own, optional, compressed IMZ format. These days there are an increasing number of people using VM or Emulator programs that only recognize uncompressed raw images. So from my experience, any standard PC 160K/180K/320K/360K/1.2MB/720K/1.4MB disk should be in a raw format (usually .IMA or .DSK extensions)

    For oddball or some copy protected PC disks, the current standard seems to be ImageDisk (.IMD) files. Non-PC systems are a whole other can of worms.

    One thing about archive standardization that is a bit of a head scratcher: Floppy disk images, or a single directory with setup files?

    Especially with Windows software, it is often possible to copy all of the files from multiple floppies to a single hard disk directory where one can just run a setup program. The catch is, you usually lose the information about which file was on which disk, thereby losing the ability to easily re-create floppy disks. On the other hand, you don't have to hunt down any other extractor. But, many DOS programs only install from floppy so including files isn't much help. Of course, for smaller programs I guess it doesn't hurt to include both.

    Now, if there were only an easy way to digitally archive printed manuals.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Zestypanda wrote:
    @Blue
    Yes, the BEos iso is fine, I was the one who created it -_- so of course it would be valid, as for conversion to iso what did you use? I don't want to spend money to convert the file to iso.

    For BeOS, I mounted the image from the archive in a virtual optical drive then I used ImgBurn to create an ISO from it.

    For Windows NT 4, I used Power ISO which is an awesome utility. I pirated it, but it's probably worth paying a little bit for it.
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