+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 I found quite the gem tonight in this program. It is on an orange disk which, IIRC, was included with my BwG FDC*. The disk includes DU2K, DM2K, and Disk Backup v2.1. It is great because it will make a backup of your floppy to the hard drive or similar mass storage. Neat! Then I copied this image over to the PC, converted it from TIFILES to PC file, and lo! it is recognized by TI99Dir as a disk image, but not by TIImageTool. Can anyone tell me what is up here? tiles.dsk * by the kind soul from whom I purchased it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shift838 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 44 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said: I found quite the gem tonight in this program. It is on an orange disk which, IIRC, was included with my BwG FDC. The disk includes DU2K, DM2K, and Disk Backup v2.1. It is great because it will make a backup of your floppy to the hard drive or similar mass storage. Neat! Then I copied this image over to the PC, converted it from TIFILES to PC file, and lo! it is recognized by TI99Dir as a disk image, but not by TIImageTool. Can anyone tell me what is up here? tiles.dsk 91 kB · 1 download fixed it... just created a new disk image with ti899dir and opened your file and copied it over to the new disk image.. DB21.dsk 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 9 minutes ago, Shift838 said: fixed it... just created a new disk image with ti899dir and opened your file and copied it over to the new disk image.. Interesting. More work than I want to put into it BTW, Classic99 recognizes the original DSK file, as well. So for all intents and purposes, it looks like this program creates usable disk images. Need to add this to my utilities arsenal. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 @Shift838 Your image is 180k versus my 90k, but in comparison to a legitimate 90k image, I found the image created by Disk Backup is 1k too long. I trimmed the image with dd and voila! TIMT recognizes it just fine and the disk checks out in perfect health. The original program might be XB, and if it is maybe that can be corrected. Does anyone know how to get a hold of Mr. Bertsch? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhataKowinkydink Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 7 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: Then I copied this image over to the PC, converted it from TIFILES to PC file, and lo! it is recognized by TI99Dir as a disk image, but not by TIImageTool. I tend to make my image files with TIImageTool, and not TI99Dir. They each have their own strengths. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 4 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: @Shift838 Your image is 180k versus my 90k, but in comparison to a legitimate 90k image, I found the image created by Disk Backup is 1k too long. I trimmed the image with dd and voila! TIMT recognizes it just fine and the disk checks out in perfect health. The original program might be XB, and if it is maybe that can be corrected. Does anyone know how to get a hold of Mr. Bertsch? Here's his website. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 3 hours ago, Ksarul said: Here's his website. Here is the entry for his disk backup program: A program for backing up and restoring disks or RAM disks. It stores an entire floppy disk in a single file. Since the storage format in the structure corresponds to the format of the virtual disks in TI emulators(.dsk files - v9t9/MESS format), so you can also transfer these "disks" on the TI. Now, finally, as E/A-5 version with Funnelweb support, improved error handling and more compelling user interface. So his intention was partly to produce emulator-usable disk images. Very cool! I have wanted such a native TI utility for a long time. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 Before I go off half-cocked and get Wolfgang involved, I wanted to make sure that the extra 1k of zeros at the end of the image was not being introduced somewhere along the way, similar to something like X-modem padding. Using TI99-HDX with packet data view turned on, I was able to determine the file is being sent from the TI with the extraneous data, which does seem to indicate this is happening at the time of creation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 I sent Wolfgang a message already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 1 minute ago, mizapf said: I sent Wolfgang a message already. Danke. I was going to get to him this evening, as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 11, 2022 Author Share Posted January 11, 2022 4 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: Danke. I was going to get to him this evening, as well. I tried sending him an email just now, but I received a bounce with an error I have never seen in 22 years of running mail servers. 550-Sender verification is required but failed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 11, 2022 Share Posted January 11, 2022 18 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: I tried sending him an email just now, but I received a bounce with an error I have never seen in 22 years of running mail servers. 550-Sender verification is required but failed. I´ve sent him a testmail yesterday, and he answered minutes ago. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 11, 2022 Share Posted January 11, 2022 18 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: 550-Sender verification is required but failed. From what I could find on the web, this seems like a measure of the receiving MTA (Mail transfer agent) to find out whether you are a spammer. One way is to set up a reverse SMTP connection to you, trying the reverse path as the recipient, and if that fails, it reports it could not verify the sender. The measure is not really recommended, but nevertheless done here and there; it may fail (produce false positives) for countless number of reasons. I have my mizapf.de domain (including MX record) for almost 20 years now, but it's getting increasingly difficult for me to get my messages to people at specific mail hosters. Hotmail, for instance, flags them as spam in recent years, and I have not yet found out why. It may be because of some anti-spam measure including the verification of signed domains. AT&T obviously blocks the IP range where my MTA is located simply because the range belongs to Strato, a major hosting provider in Germany (2 million customers, 4 million domains), but of course, spammer attacks are likely to originate from there since not all systems are properly guarded. I'm afraid that over time people are virtually forced to drop their own domains and mail services and have to join the major players (like Google) because you are more and more locked out. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 12, 2022 Author Share Posted January 12, 2022 17 hours ago, mizapf said: From what I could find on the web, this seems like a measure of the receiving MTA (Mail transfer agent) to find out whether you are a spammer. One way is to set up a reverse SMTP connection to you, trying the reverse path as the recipient, and if that fails, it reports it could not verify the sender. The measure is not really recommended, but nevertheless done here and there; it may fail (produce false positives) for countless number of reasons. Having a moment of clarity this morning, I checked mail logs. There was no apparent reverse-SMTP check, the recipient MTA just puked on the session. Funny, since I have an SPF record, an mta-sts, and even DNSSEC. Not sure what else I can do to bolster things (DKIM is a bit of a pain) -- it is actually getting quite tiring. Some time ago, someone apparently put out the word to low-level IT that you must have DMARC, which is little more than a useless reporting system for failed SPF checks. 17 hours ago, mizapf said: I'm afraid that over time people are virtually forced to drop their own domains and mail services and have to join the major players (like Google) because you are more and more locked out. Yeah, and these jackasses are the worst for spam and standards violations. During a recent cybersecurity incident I investigated, I found that Microsoft does not honor SPF properly, and even with SPF you can still spoof domains if the spoofed domain and recipient addressee are within the Office365 system. 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 13, 2022 Author Share Posted January 13, 2022 On 1/11/2022 at 5:27 PM, mizapf said: I'm afraid that over time people are virtually forced to drop their own domains and mail services and have to join the major players (like Google) because you are more and more locked out. As the risk of dragging this thread more off-topic, I did want to mention that if you run mail servers, it is a huge benefit to sign up with these various services' reciprocal postmaster programs. After registering, it does open up a bit more leeway for mail acceptance and support in most cases. I have been signed up with ComCast, Google, AOL, and Yahoo! (the latter two the same entity these days) for a long time and it has been helpful. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 13, 2022 Share Posted January 13, 2022 @OLD CS1 with Reverse-SMTP, do you mean Reverse-DNS, is this the same ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 13, 2022 Share Posted January 13, 2022 2 hours ago, Schmitzi said: @OLD CS1 with Reverse-SMTP, do you mean Reverse-DNS, is this the same ? No, you obviously mean PTR resolution in DNS (IP address to FQDN); the reverse SMTP connection is (what I learned) when the recipient MTA tries to set up a mail transport in your direction to verify that the sender is OK. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 19 hours ago, mizapf said: No, you obviously mean PTR resolution in DNS (IP address to FQDN); the reverse SMTP connection is (what I learned) when the recipient MTA tries to set up a mail transport in your direction to verify that the sender is OK. ah OK, and to establish this ´Reverse SMTP´-connection, in addition to this, it can do a ´Reverse DNS´-resolution before, to safely check it´s the correct sender (DNS/MX for that IP) (where the reverse SMTP is going to....) (this?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 31 minutes ago, Schmitzi said: ah OK, and to establish this ´Reverse SMTP´-connection, in addition to this, it can do a ´Reverse DNS´-resolution before, to safely check it´s the correct sender (DNS/MX for that IP) (where the reverse SMTP is going to....) (this?) Yes. A lot of mail servers will do a quick rDNS/fDNS comparison to make sure the A (or AAAA) and PTR records match. This ostensibly indicates that the mail server is on an IP address under control of the server operator. Some systems will reject a failed rDNS/fDNS out-right, or give additional weight in spam filtering. As well, the recipient MTA can make a quick connection to either the server which is sending the email, or an MX for FROM envelope domain, and issue a VRFY, EXPN, or RCPT TO command using the envelope address to ensure it is a valid email address. Whatever the method, the reverse SMTP can be intrusive or annoying so the results are usually cached for a certain period of time. I have seen this form of verification less and less over time as most mail servers will not honor VRFY or EXPN commands, while others will penalize servers (in spam filters) which issue a RCPT TO and do not complete a full transaction. BTW, both of these checks also verify that a mail server is following two RFC best-practices: first that an IP address is properly named, and that a sending email address should also receive email. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 4:27 AM, OLD CS1 said: I found quite the gem tonight in this program. It is on an orange disk which, IIRC, was included with my BwG FDC*. The disk includes DU2K, DM2K, and Disk Backup v2.1. It is great because it will make a backup of your floppy to the hard drive or similar mass storage. Neat! Then I copied this image over to the PC Could you send me that TIFILES file please (before stripping the header)? I got a reply from Wolfgang, but I need to check something first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 53 minutes ago, mizapf said: Could you send me that TIFILES file please (before stripping the header)? I got a reply from Wolfgang, but I need to check something first. In the FP. Actually, that may be the converted from TIFILES to PC. I will make sure in a little bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 FP = first post? The file "tiles.dsk" is not a TIFILES-headered file; it seems as if you already stripped the header. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 7 minutes ago, mizapf said: FP = first post? The file "tiles.dsk" is not a TIFILES-headered file; it seems as if you already stripped the header. Yup, you are correct. I remembered that shortly after posting. It is going to be a little bit before I can get that to you as I am unable to make it to my office just yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 14, 2022 Author Share Posted January 14, 2022 @mizapf Okay, attached is the TIFILES copy sent from the TI via HDX, the PC conversion made by TI99Dir, then the output of the dd command: dd if=TILES99.PC of=TILES99.DSK bs=1024 count=90 tiles.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 14, 2022 Share Posted January 14, 2022 The error is already in the TILES99.TIFILES file. By the way, this should not be called a TIFILES format but a format where the first 128 bytes of the file information block are prepended as a header to the file. We could need a proper name for that. The original TIFILES format starts with 0x07, "TIFILES". Sometimes I wished we had a more rigorous format specification; you just can't tell what is meant my "X format". I remember that I added the support for this format to TIImageTool long ago. The header looks like this: $ xxd TILES99.TIFILES 00000000: 5449 4c45 5339 3920 2020 0000 0002 0170 TILES99 .....p 00000010: 0080 d002 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000020: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000050: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000060: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00000080: 5449 4c45 5339 3920 2020 0168 0944 534b TILES99 .h.DSK 00000090: 2028 0101 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 (.............. ... 00017030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00017040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00017050: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00017060: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ 00017070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ The 0170 in the first line means "368 (=0x170) sectors in this file". Hence, the file is 2 KiB too long, padded with 00. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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