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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Specs78 on June 20, 2004, 05:33:40 PM

Title: Need help with large ADF files.
Post by: Specs78 on June 20, 2004, 05:33:40 PM
Hi every1,
I'm in the process of coverting ADFs of games onto disk. I have mangaged to find ADFs of the games I want to restore to disk, the only problem is that some of the games are quite large, and need to be spanned over 2 or more disks. How do I place the ADF into memory on my Amiga, then spread the ADF over the disks? Also I don't know if I've got the right Null Modem Cable. What type do I would I need to buy if I've got the wrong one?

Specs78
Title: Re: Need help with large ADF files.
Post by: cgutjahr on June 20, 2004, 05:56:57 PM
Quote

Specs78 wrote:

I'm in the process of coverting ADFs of games onto disk. I have mangaged to find ADFs of the games I want to restore to disk, the only problem is that some of the games are quite large, and need to be spanned over 2 or more disks.

An ADF is a disk image of one disk and always is about 900 KB big (forgot the exact number, but they're all the same size).

If your file is bigger than that, it is either a HDF ("hard disk file") which can not be restored to a floppy disk (because it's not a floppy disk image) or a ZIP archive containing several ADFs.

In the latter case, extract the archive and you'll end up with several ADFs which can be written back to floppy disks seperately.

Quote

Also I don't know if I've got the right Null Modem Cable. What type do I would I need to buy if I've got the wrong one?

Any null modem cable should be fine. To test if your cable works, simply use LhA or ZIP to pack a single text document and transfer that to the other computer. If the target computer is able to extract (and display) the text file, your connection is fine.
Title: Re: Need help with large ADF files.
Post by: platon42 on June 20, 2004, 06:45:56 PM
> An ADF is a disk image of one disk and always is about 900 KB big (forgot the exact number, but they're all the same size).

Nope, that's not quite correct. Most of the ADFs are 880KB in size, containing 160 tracks of disk data, but there is also an ADF format storing possibly long tracks in MFM encoded raw format (Look at the factor5 homepage, a lot of their old games are available there in this special format) with close to 2 MB for one ADF. In the case of long tracks, there is no (non-floppy-hardware-modifying) way of storing them back to a disk. Also trying to compress these files is in vain, because a) the mfm encoding and b) most of the data is probably already compressed anyway.
Title: Re: Need help with large ADF files.
Post by: jeffimix on June 20, 2004, 06:55:12 PM
Try just doing one adf at a time?