I am, however, against distributing these images/backups/etc on a large scale.
Granted.
Personally, I believe that given the right tools and materials a game like Mt. Drash (in fact any older game as we have seen with Eyal) could be reproduced and sold as an original.
Granted, especially for tapes.
Obviously Eyal was sloppy and didn't have the disk images so he just put garbage on the disks but given original images I hate to think about what is possible.
In fact, I can assure you it's not easy to recreate a disk from an FDI file. In a general way, it is simply impossible, so that's already a good point. The FDI files can only be used with emulators (or partial emulators, such as a floppy drive/controller emulator).
I have been backing up my collection with a program called winima40. It seems to work pretty well for making images of disks.
It's only a sector dumper, and only works with IBM-formatted MFM disks (mostly PC and Atari ST). This is what the trial version of Disk2FDI offers for IBM MFM disks. This part took me about 1 week to code, compared to the 6 months for FDI imaging ;-)
I look forward to when yours is released so that I may try it as well. I do, however, keep these images to myself and for my own use.
FDI files are currently only supported under WinUAE, the Amiga emulator, but Disk2FDI can image floppy disks for any machine (C64, Apple 2, PC, ...).
I know it sucks and I don't want to sound like an old miser, because I would love for everyone to enjoy these games in the way I have. But at this point 85% of the Sierra disks you can get off ebay still work so if people want to play these games they are welcome to get them from there.
Still, for a major preservation project, buying each and every game made for each and every machine will quickly reveal to be very time-consuming, expansive
By they way does anyone actually know what the lifespan of a floppy is?
Between 20 and 30 years, depending on the disk and storage conditions.
Vincent - I do run vintage-sierra.com unfortunately the '83 KQ is not for sale at this time :( I will keep you in mind though if it ever is!
OK, thanks! ;-)
Vincent.
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