Un-initialised Disks

[scuzzb494]

I have been steadily going through my collection of disks and putting them into adf format. There are literally thousands and thousands of disk images now all safely backed up onto PC. Thing is that like the other day when I received 100 PD disks, half of them were self booting and un-initialised. I have no way of looking at the contents of the disk other than putting the disk in the computer. And the machine normally has to be an A500.

I have also a number of CDs with dms files on them which when I uncrunch create an un-initialised disk which I can play on the 500 but not interogate.

I know we are into the realms of cracking disks but is there a simple way to save the image into a format that I can actually refer to. I would love to get these demo PD disks into a format that I can transfer onto the PC

Thanks for reading

[Thomas]

Both DMS and ADF are fine for archiving NDOS disks.

These unitialized disks don't contain any AmigaDOS files, they can only be read by the little piece of code stored in the bootblock of each disk. That's why they are called NDOS (Not DOS). Storing them as ADF or DMS (with NOZERO option) is the only way to archive these disks and running them on an Amiga or emulator is the only way to access their contents.

[scuzzb494]

Both DMS and ADF are fine for archiving NDOS disks.

These unitialized disks don't contain any AmigaDOS files, they can only be read by the little piece of code stored in the bootblock of each disk. That's why they are called NDOS (Not DOS). Storing them as ADF or DMS (with NOZERO option) is the only way to archive these disks and running them on an Amiga or emulator is the only way to access their contents.

Thanks for that. Very informative.

DMS does give me a quick glimspe of the bootblock though just a title to the disk or some idea of what is on it would be useful so I can file away as dms. I can Blitz some un-initialised disks, but I still have to take to the 500 to have a quick play to see what the content is. Otherwise the file gets stored under a random number and I am unable to reference it. Hopefully that makes sense.

Most of these demos predate the 1200/4000 era when it was more common to play without Workbench on an A500. Quite imaginative use of disk space given the content contains images, animation and sound files. Quite a lot of information for a small disk. Thing is with thousands to file away it takes a while to decrunch and play them just so I can store with a suitable file name.