disk image emulator on the GS - possible? - comp.sys.apple2

Message from discussion disk image emulator on the GS - possible?
Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!spamkiller.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!nwrddc01.gnilink.net.POSTED!ad961c6a!not-for-mail
From: "Charlie" <charlieD...@verEYEzon.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
References: <169a0537-cda8-4351-aba3-df8248c22fb8@d32g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: disk image emulator on the GS - possible?
Lines: 29
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180
X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original
Message-ID: <ggN2m.1939$9l4.1081@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:44:44 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.238.207.217
X-Complaints-To: abuse@verizon.net
X-Trace: nwrddc01.gnilink.net 1246470284 68.238.207.217 (Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:44:44 EDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:44:44 EDT


"nyder" <nyder...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:169a0537-cda8-4351-aba3-df8248c22fb8@d32g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> Sorry if this question has been asked before, I tried seaching, but
> kept getting stuff for the SVD or emulators.
>
> Just wonder how possible is a disk image emulator for the GS?
>
> I figure you need 2 megs of space for the biggest images, which is
> very possible with ram cards.
>
> would the overhead be too much?

Possibly, depending on how many of the disk image formats you want to 
support and how robust you want that support to be.  There are quite a 
few disk image formats and some allow almost anything in the image. 
Even the 2mg format has documented support for 3 types of images and 
there have been less well documented attempts to add more image types. 
So any code written to use disk images in a GS would have to determine 
what format the image is (it can't just look at the file extension) and 
it would have to determine if there was enough memory available to 
handle the image.  A 2mg, .po, or .hdv image *can* be just under 
32MBytes.
I believe all of this can be done if you don't expect it to handle 
everything.  I'm not sure it's worth the effort though.

Charlie