Correct. It should probably have been: It will fully backup Apple II, Commodore, and Atari disks.* *5.25", up to 40 tracks, single side. Although 3.5" disk support is also planned after release. Support is built in to the hardware currently. The UI will have the 3.5" support added. Henry S. Courbis Office Toll Free: (800) REACTIVE (732-2848) Office/Mobile Direct: (856) 779-1900 www.ReActiveMicro.com <http://www.ReactiveMicro.com> - Sales, Support, and News, Our Headquarters on the Internet ReActiveMicro.com/wiki - Support, Software, Manuals, and History. Create your own page today! Facebook.com/reactivemicrousa - Our Social Media Outlet and Support On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 8:34 PM, Neil Cherry <ncherry@linuxha.com> wrote:
On 03/28/2018 11:25 PM, Henry S. Courbis via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
"Cracking" software to preserve it is akin to taking a picture of artwork and letting the original rot away in my opinion.
Sure, some of the original bit patterns are intact, but it's not close to an original in any sense of the word. Cracking has its own pitfalls, such as secondary protections within the program which check if the protection is intact. And of course the most major aspect is the art which is the copy protection is totally lost. So in my opinion few is any disks have really been preserved. One however could argue unprotected disks like System Masters are preserved.
So as in the picture analogy you do get an idea of what the disk contained, however its in no means "preserved". Closest I can come to a definition is "emulated".
Luckily we have some hope on the near horizon - Applesauce: https://wiki.reactivemicro.com/Applesauce
It will fully backup Apple II, Commodore, and Atari disks. And by "backup" I mean preserve the actual flux transitions as they appear on the floppy medium. It's really neat to be able to see the disk's fingerprint. They way the fluxes are laid out allows for each image to be IDed much like a fingerprint. You can see damage to a disk, and even when the drive head is dirty. https://wiki.reactivemicro.com/Applesauce#Applesauce:_The_Software
This looks to be the best solution for software preservation. A digital copy of the magnetic flux that was recorded. This means a few things need to be known about the floppy and it can be any vendor. Of course a few different type of working drives will still be needed (40, 80, 250 bps, 500 bps, 3.5 5.25, 8 etc.).
-- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies