The Disk Masher System (.dms) is an often used method on the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...
, to create a
compressed image of a disk (usually
floppy
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
). The disk is read
block
Block or blocked may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting
* Block programming, the result of a programming strategy in broadcasting
* W242BX, a radio station licensed to Greenville, South Carolina, United States known as ''96.3 ...
-by-block, and thus its data structure is maintained. DMS won approval particularly in the
demo scene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...
and the
Warez scene
The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is a worldwide, underground, organized network of pirate groups specializing in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media for free before their official sale date. The Scene distributes all fo ...
, since with this tool, disk images could generally be transferred easily with
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
s to
mailbox
Mailbox may refer to:
* Letter box (also known as a letter plate, letter hole, deed or mail slot), a private receptacle for ''incoming'' mail
* Post box (also known as a drop box), a public receptacle for ''outgoing'' mail
** Pillar box, a fre ...
networks like
FidoNet for efficient distribution.
The DiskMasher format is copyright-protected and has problems storing particular bit sequences due to bugs in the compression algorithm, but was widely used in the pirate and demo scenes. To avoid these issues, a number of other disk compressors were developed that used alternative disk reading and compression methods, for instance, xDM
or
XAD (software)
The XAD system is an open-source client-based unarchiving system for the Amiga. This means there is a master library called ''xadmaster.library'' which provides an interface between the client and the user application and there are clients handlin ...
.
References
External linksxDMS
- Tool for AmigaOS, MS-DOS and Linux for decompressing DMS files.
{{software-type-stub
Archive formats