Some newbie questions

[mictlantecuhtle]

Got your PM, dats have been uploaded.

Just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for your patience in dealing with all my questions.

[Marz]

Hello
I admit its been a while since I read the Docs, but I always wondered:
How should a platform with multiple Operating Systems ( such as the 1980's IBMs having DOS, CP/M and later OS/2 1.x ) handle the different operating systems?
I'm assuming the dat files to be named  IBM PC-XT compatible and IBM PC-AT compatible )
(see attached PDF file)
could the DAT files include Metadata in the future? ( eg each datfile uses  more traits that file naming and sizing ( specificy application name to run for a DOS game ( or installer name to run )?
Also one last point
How hard would a Commodore B-series dat file be to start?
Has anyone here checked Dave Dunfield's website for disk images for S-100 Bus systems and the TRS-80 Model II?
The site is at http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield

Marz

[Cassiel]

As you've discovered, DATs tend to be split by hardware platform. Specific software requirements (even OS platform the software runs on) tends to be [more info], e.g. [Req Workbench 2.0].

[mictlantecuhtle]

Figured I'd just reply here rather than starting a new topic.

I've been playing around with cleaning up and adding to the Atari 2600 dats, as it's much quicker to do a few games here and there in my spare time. Doesn't look like it's been touched in a while, so I hope nobody minds...

Anyway, it's thrown up a couple of cases I'm not sure of:

1) Developer name of "John V. Williams, III". I've been treating this as "Williams III, John V.", stripping out the extra comma as I can't figure out any other sensible way to do it. If anyone's got any suggestions for a better way to treat this, they would be most welcome.

2) Early builds of games released with a different title. Example: The beta builds of "Dark Mage" by Greg Troutman were released on the Stella mailing list as simply "Z26 Text Adventure Game". I'm not sure whether I should rename these as "Dark Mage (1997-04-02)(Troutman, Greg)(NTSC)(PD)(beta)[Z26 Text Adventure Game]", "Z26 Text Adventure Game (1997-04-02)(Troutman, Greg)(NTSC)(PD)(beta)[Beta of Dark Mage]" or simply as "Dark Mage (1997-04-02)(Troutman, Greg)(NTSC)(PD)(beta)"

The above is perhaps a bad example, as "Z26 Text Adventure Game" is clearly a working title, but I have come across instances where the name of the game has been changed at some late stage - one example being "JoustPong" which was changed to "FlapPing" at a late stage in the development of the game.

[TKaos]

1.) No suggestion, "Williams III, John V." seems ok to use.
2.) I'd stick with the original working title, so "Z26 Text Adventure Game (1997-04-02)(Troutman, Greg)(NTSC)(PD)(beta)[Beta of Dark Mage]".
Maybe change [Beta of Dark Mage] to [Dark Mage Beta].

[mictlantecuhtle]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.