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| Instructions for 'Disk2File Grabber v2.0' by MUG U.K |
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Released into the Public Domain
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With this little creation of mine, you can grab almost ANY disk data
from anywhere and store it within a file, so that you can hack it to
little bits !!! It is not meant as a proper hackers tool, but I daresay
it will be of some use to someone .... somewhere - besides myself !!
Using this program, I managed to hack out the music for 'Chips Challenge'
from US Gold (brilliant & addictive game !!). I have also tested this
disk out on some golden-oldie demos, and 'Rockstar Ate My Hamster' !!
On 'Rockstar ..', I found the Soundtracker module for the game, so I
promptly ripped it off !!! I have also managed to get it to 'borrow' three
Amiga '.IFF' file pictures from 'Matrix Marauders' by Psyclapse !! It is
amazing what you find on those little blue things you shove into your
disk-drive !!
All you have to do is input the start & end (logical) sectors of the disk
that you want to 'grab' from, then wait for it to get these sectors into
memory. Unlike the first version of this program, you are not waiting
around, not knowing which sector is being read at the moment, but in this
version I've added a printout option. I have also added an option to
switch the printout option off, this is because it will speed up the
process slightly - if you require a straight grab of a disk, and you know
that the target disk is a perfect copy (ie. No errors), then use the
earlier version of my program, which will grab the data in a lot faster.
The reason for the slowness is because I am reading in each sector at a
time, checking for any errors, printing the sector and doing the next
sector etc. etc. In the old version I just grabbed the whole lot, without
checking for errors !!
Once in memory, the program will ask you to insert another disk (unless
you've got a hard-drive !!) in order to save out the new file. Now all
you have to do, is load up MONST (or which ever is your favourite
monitor/disassembler/file hacker !!), and play around with your newly
created file.
I have made some provisions for duff disks, but not many as this would
make the program larger than necessary. Because of the short size, you
can grab a double-sided, 82-track, 10-sector formatted disk in one go, but
only if you've got 1 meg of memory (as any good hacker should have !!) or
more.
In the previous version of this program, if a disk error occured, you were
returned back to the main menu, and all was lost !!! Not so, in this
version, if you are prompted with the standard GEM alert box of 'Data in
Drive A: is damaged ...' etc, select the 'Cancel' option. This will return
control back to my own program. From here you can either skip this duff
sector (carry on grabbing more sectors), save out the buffer so far, upto
the last logical sector that was read in or quit back to the menu.
Unfortunately, I've made no provisions for seperate passes into seperate
files, I'm afraid that is down to you. So, if you've only got half-meg
of memory, grab the disk required into two (or more) seperate files.
Future releases may (or may not) include these features:-
1) Some nice music playing whilst you grab away.
2) Ability to grab sectors and continously write them to an opened file
on another disk (or RAM-disk ??), but obviously this will only be available
to owners of extra floppy or hard-drives !!
Have fun !!
MUG U.K. - 27/3/1991
P.S. If I can hack music & graphix out with this little program, what can
you do with it ???