Disk Jockey v3 for macOS is out!

[Stinkerton18]

I totally understand the Windows thing and hope it doesn't seem like I'm complaining or demanding. My only modern Mac is my 14 M1 MBP that isn't always where I'm at when I'm tinkering/working with a retro machine. More often than not it's my Windows gaming rig or Linux Bridge Box that I need to make images with.

I totally forgot about DJJr though until you mentioned it. That solves a couple things for me in being able to build new images and mount/populate them in one go. I know, I can use dd to make images too but Disk Jockey has been MUCH more reliable/dependable and I don't mess up silly things like the name/LUN/SCSI ID numbers. :/

 

[OneGeekArmy]

I totally understand the Windows thing and hope it doesn't seem like I'm complaining or demanding. My only modern Mac is my 14 M1 MBP that isn't always where I'm at when I'm tinkering/working with a retro machine. More often than not it's my Windows gaming rig or Linux Bridge Box that I need to make images with.

I totally forgot about DJJr though until you mentioned it. That solves a couple things for me in being able to build new images and mount/populate them in one go. I know, I can use dd to make images too but Disk Jockey has been MUCH more reliable/dependable and I don't mess up silly things like the name/LUN/SCSI ID numbers. :/

I absolutely do NOT see this as a complaint. It's a perfectly legitimate question

djjr is a good alternative. It can create new images: blanks (like dd does) or Mac devices with a SCSI driver and everything. If you only specify the SCSI ID you want, it will automatically generate a proper name for the output file. So, for example:

djjr create mac-device -sM 20 --scsi-id 4

creates a new device image for Mac (with a SCSI driver) of 20 MB in size and will name it "HD40_512 20MB.hda”.

It can also analyze images (and dump all the details of your disk image as a JSON file if you want) and convert them: a volume image becomes a device image or vice-versa. And if you're suffering from the Curse of the LIDO Driver, it can substitute it for the standard Apple driver.

Here's a summary:

Disk Jockey

Disk Jockey, a disk image file maker for your retro stuff

diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu

 

[JDW]

@OneGeekArmy

I for one am thankful for that "bright-eyed teenager" inside you. Every release is incredible. Just when you think Disk Jockey can't get any better, it does! Bravo!

 

[OneGeekArmy]

@OneGeekArmy

I for one am thankful for that "bright-eyed teenager" inside you. Every release is incredible. Just when you think Disk Jockey can't get any better, it does! Bravo!

Thank you!

The continued enthusiasm of the community for my little project is the main driver of my work on DJ.

 

[lilliputian]

Congratulations on a monumental milestone! HFS+ is a big step.

I still hold out hope for DC6 NDIF image compatibility, but I know it's a tougher problem than most, given that most such files are compressed.

 

[OneGeekArmy]

Congratulations on a monumental milestone! HFS+ is a big step.

I still hold out hope for DC6 NDIF image compatibility, but I know it's a tougher problem than most, given that most such files are compressed.

NDIF is a tough egg to crack. The compression is part of the issue, but the lack of documentation is a bigger one as far as I am concerned. There's a lot of "feeling things in the dark" experimentation involved.

Right now, my path is to start further down the timeline of image formats, with UDIF (which is much more documented), and try and see what I need to take away from it to get to a working NDIF implementation. There is a filiation between the two, so it could be workable.

It's probably a silly way to go about it, but a very strong (and probably foolhardy) goal I've set for myself is that DJ must be built entirely from scratch. There is no external library involved*, no code stolen from anywhere (not even a copy / paste from GitHub) and the resources I use for development have to be historical (no modern blog post explaining how something works can be used). Yes, I'm a paying subscriber and avid consumer of archive.org
I want to build it entirely by hand because I enjoy the journey immensely**.

So, solving the NDIF problem pushes the limits I've imposed myself, but I'm relishing the challenge



* Except for Sparkle, which handles the auto-update mechanism, because that's a problem space that doesn't interest me at all, and the library is very respectful of users and their machines.

** There's a part of my brain that lights up when I work on it, because it harkens back to my childhood. I started programming on a CoCo 2 when I was 9 and, back then, it was mostly me just throwing syntax around to see what would happen (and the fact that BASIC was in English while I was a French native only added to the "magical incantation" approach of it all).
Being able to revisit the magical machines of back then with an adult eye and decrypting how they worked inside using period-authentic documentation is an absolute thrill. it's almost therapeutic

 

[PL212]

Thanks for all your great work on this! Is there a way for folks to contribute more TYPE/CREATOR codes (in the right-hand column), for either better description and/or suffixing of appropriate extensions in some cases? Apologies if I've missed where the code is hosted...

 

[OneGeekArmy]

Thanks for all your great work on this! Is there a way for folks to contribute more TYPE/CREATOR codes (in the right-hand column), for either better description and/or suffixing of appropriate extensions in some cases? Apologies if I've missed where the code is hosted...

Type / Creator support is indeed a little anemic right now and will be the focus of an upcoming update. People who work on actual, very serious software archiving have been getting in touch with me because DJ is actually useful in their work (if you can believe it). Part of what they'd like to see is more complete type / creator support and I'd like to oblige (old stuff must be preserved!).

DJ's code is not public, but I could share the JSON files it uses for its lookups. Let me see if I can find a way for anyone to collaborate on this.

And thanks for suggesting your help! Much appreciated!

 

[eric]

I have a json list for fix-a-fork - but if we could just all key off one repo and pull it in that'd be cool. (use a little python script to generate the c class file). The one thing is not every file extension maps cleanly - some depend on what you have installed. Easy one is .html - is that IE? Netscape? Mosaic? Dreamweaver? Other?

 

[PL212]

These are all good points, and I think to a certain extent the use case for Type/Creator -> extension might be limited to cases where modern apps have a chance of reading the file...?

8BIM/JPEG -> .jpg seems like an obvious winner... probably even PICT files -> .pict, since software such as GraphicConverter and ImageMagick can translate those files.

But a 1987 ForeThought PowerPoint presentation... should that really be given an extension of .ppt? How long has it been since PowerPoint can open that kind of file, I wonder...

[Pythonmac-SIG] Discovering file type