Hi!
Ok, thanks. I'll amend my own dats to remove the ltd. And change issue 22 Disk 02.
Otherwise, I think I need to have more of a chat about the files, and how (ST) disks work.
Those disks in your collection are, as I said, just someone making a copy of most of the files from the original disk.
It's the same as copying files from a CD to a HDD on your PC, and them making a new CD. (But forgetting 1 or more files).
The new CD technically contains 99% of the original data, but, not in the same way, in the same order which, as it turns out, was critically important for much of the magazines early life.
If you're not going to remove them, then, I think you need to make it very clear that these disks had nothing to do with the originals.
Let me explain further.
They're not making a copy of the disk itself. So, to be fair, those disks that you have aren't actually [a]lternative versions of the original disks in question. They're all, at best, [h]acks. No other medium has a problem like this, unfortunately.
About 90 of your disks are missing at least one file (desktop.inf) from the original disk, which means they're all bad. (And marked as bad?? I'm not sure how you do things like this.)
But worse. All the original ST machines came with single sided drives. And as such, couldn't access any of the data *at all* on a double sided disk.
Nothing. Nada.
So, Rob Norton came up with a special format for ST disks, that most magazines used. (At least in the early days. Most eventually switched to DS/DD disks at some point in their life cycle)
They formatted, instead of alternating sides, as was the usual way, All 80 tracks of side 1, and then, extended that and formatted all 80 tracks of side two.
So, if you look inside these disk images, you'll see many many of the original (probably first half) of the ST Action collection has a folder called side2.
This was a special folder, and created in the above manner, so that people with single sided drives saw what was on side1, but got an error from side 2 if they tried to access this folder.
It allowed them to access at least 50% of the disk, without upgrading to a double sided drive. (Which is why you can see on all the labels, what's on the disk marked as on side 1 and side 2. This is why it's important)
More than 100 of your disks aren't formatted like this at all, so, they're 100% not a copy of the original disk.
Which is why I think the [a] [a1] etc should all be removed.
If you're going to keep a bad copy someone made badly, which is a sort of half approximation of the original, you should only keep one of these.
In addition, as I said earlier, the order that you copy files on makes a difference, so, everyone that copied on these files to a normal blank could have copied them in a different order.
(and likely did).
So, if a disk has 10 files, you could have (is it !10 kinds of permutations?) times single sided, double sided, 9, 10, 11 and then 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 tracks.
So, for each disk that has 10 files, you could have 10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x21 kinds of "blank disk" approximations. So. 76,204,800 variations, for each disk.
And I truly believe it's pointless cataloguing all of these permutations, *especially* when they're not actual dumps of the original disks, just someone making up something close to the original.
The closest analogy I can think of is someone recording songs and putting them on CD and saying it should be catalogued because it contains almost the correct information.
Unfortunately, almost none of these disks were mastered, so, I put forth the case that they should be removed. Keep one bad version, to cut down on pointless duplication, and then replace them with the real ones when (if) they become available.
Most of them have the correct files for the games/programs listed, but, are missing at least 1 file (desktop.inf), or have a version that someone else hand created, and crucially, are not mastered to the Single Sided/double sided special Rob Norton format.
If you want to know a bit more about the desktop.inf, let me know. It's an optional file, but if present, controls how the windows on the desktop appear, the resolution it boots in, the names on the drives, and some other stuff.
In computing terms, the .st file format is closer to a .tar file than anything else. (Not really, but go with it for the moment!)
It has a special header telling how many sides the disk has, how many tracks and how many sectors used. After that, all the files are more or less tarred together.
Or rather, that's how it's being used here. In reality, it's got that header, and then just a list of data on tracks.
Almost none of the Tosec disks even vaguely resemble the original disks, at the track level, unfortunately.
One of the tracks contains the FAT table, and this is what Rob Norton modified. And then aligned the files to one side or the other.
So, I guess, it's closer to interleaved vs non-interleaved. (Which has no virtual, but some real world differences)
It took me a while to get to the point, but I got there eventually!
So, I guess, the big question is, are the collection of files on a disk (with one or more modified files) the same as the layout of the original disk + all files unmodified.
(But, they've been modified in a way that's invisible to most modern users)
Obviously, I think they're not!
But, you guys need to decide if you agree.
