HDF format
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The HDF format was created by Ramsoft for storing hard disk images for emulation. An .hdf file contains a header followed by a raw dump of the hard disk data.
The Specification document is reproduced below.
HDF Format
Ramsoft RealSpectrum
HDF 1.0 File Format Specification
***********************************
document revision 0.3 20/02/01
(C)2001 RAMSOFT
HDF files are used to store hard-disk data into image files for emulation
purposes. They consist in a file header, followed by a raw dump of the
tracks data.
The following is the format of the HDF header. All numbers are
hexadecimal and in Intel-byte-order (little endian).
Offset Len Meaning
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
00 06 "RS-IDE"
06 01 0x1A
07 01 Revision number (BCD), current: 0x10 (v1.0)
08 01 b0: halved sector data (only LSB of sector words is stored)
09 02 offset of hard-disk data (0x0080)
0B 0B reserved (MUST be set to 0x00)
16 6A IDE/ATA identification data, as returned by ATA command 0xEC
word[09] ?? raw hard-disk data (C0 H0, C0 H1 ... C0 H15, C1 H0, C1 H1 ...)
Note: IDE devices transfer data in 16-bit words. Since the Z80 data bus
is only 8-bit, so some IDE adapters use additional logic to split the IDE
word into two bytes so that the Z80 can fetch them. However, other adapters
discard the most significant byte of the word completely, in favour of a
simplified circuitry; in this case, only half of the nominal capacity of a
disk sector is used. Bit 0 at offset 0x08 is introduced to signal this
evenience: when it is set, it means that the sector size specified by
the IDE identification data is actually halved in the HDF file. This
is done to reduce the HDF file size, by storing only the "usable" significant
data; for all the supported adapters, the least significant byte is stored.
The IDE identification data format is reported into any IDE/ATA technical
paper. It contains information about the drive geometry (cylinders, heads,
sectors, sector size), the device model name, the supported features and so on.
----
The Ramsoft staff <ramsoft@bbk.org>
http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org
Version 1.1
This version simply extends the IDE/ATA identification data section in the header to store the full 512 byte block, rather than just the first 106 bytes. In particular, this means that words 60-61, which hold the total number of user addressable sectors when accessing the disk in LBA mode, are no longer cut off. (This isn't a showstopper for software working with version 1.0 files, though, since this information can be inferred and reconstructed by checking the overall size of the .hdf file.)
Offset Len Meaning
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
00 06 "RS-IDE"
06 01 0x1A
07 01 Revision number (BCD): 0x11 (v1.1)
08 01 b0: halved sector data (only LSB of sector words is stored)
09 02 offset of hard-disk data (0x0216)
0B 0B reserved (MUST be set to 0x00)
16 200 IDE/ATA identification data, as returned by ATA command 0xEC
word[09] ?? raw hard-disk data (C0 H0, C0 H1 ... C0 H15, C1 H0, C1 H1 ...)