Applesauce Client Software

The Applesauce Client Software controls the Applesauce hardware, but is also a standalone disk image analysis/repair/conversion tool. It is free to use, so why don’t you download it and give it a try.

Platforms Supported

The software currently only supports macOS 10.11 or better. Runs natively on 64-bit Intel and M1 Macintosh computers.

Windows and Linux clients are in the plan, but the focus is still on the Mac client. Many users are successfully running the Mac client in a virtual machine (such as VirtualBox) on Windows and Linux.

Downloads

Applesauce Client v1.88.1 for macOS – December 2, 2023

Release Notes

2 December 2023 – Release 1.88.1

Some optimizations to the Fast Imager. Many disks now image almost 15% faster.
In the Disk Analyzer, the Compare/Repair pane would show the incorrect name of other disks.
Heathkit HDOS and MTU CODOS stopped being able to export files. Fixed.
Fixed Fast Imager log disk maps for disks that have sectors on side 1 labeled as if they are on side 0 (like Kaypro).
The CP/M Settings window now remembers where you last placed it when re-opening.

25 November 2023 – Release 1.88

A very large portion of the work for this release was adding support for parsing the files on CP/M disks. Not content with the idea of just adding support for a few variations of CP/M, I set out to try to build a system that rivals if not exceeds cpmtools or 22disk. Under the Tools menu in the client, there is a CP/M Settings option that lets you view all of the currently supported definitions. It also lets you create new definitions and supports this endeavor via the Guess Settings button that uses heuristics to analyze the disk structure and automatically creates a definition for you. It is a pretty good guesser, but some tricky formats might need manual intervention to get working properly. The Settings screen also has the ability to import/export definitions so that you can share. If you create definitions that you think would be useful to others, feel free to drop into the “cpm” channel of the Discord to submit your definitions for including in future Applesauce releases.
Added support for Brother 120K and 240K GCR disks that were used for many of their word processors and by various bits of audio/music gear. File system support has also been added for the Brother word processor disks. Loading and saving of these disk from .img files is also included.
Several enhancements to the Fast Imager data recovery routines.
Added support for Centurion Minicomputer disks.
Support for oddball Macintosh 400K HFS disks.
Improvements to detection of Victor 9000 MS-DOS disks.
More copy protection techniques are now detected/reported for IBM-structured disks.
Improved experience when dealing with unknown disk encodings within the nibble view of the Disk Analyzer. You can now more reliably switch the view between various encodings as well as searching for unsynchronized bit patterns in order to ease the process of reverse engineering formats.
Several enhancements to the processing of FM/MFM/M2FM disks.
Added support for reading FluxEngine .flux files.
Fixed a bug when processing some DMK files where it could get confused about the number of disk sides.
A ton of small fixes and cleanup.

24 September 2023 – Release 1.87

Lots more internal code cleanup and modernization in order to improve performance and code maintainability. This release also has a new v2.58 firmware which is primarily cleanup as well, but does have a couple new bits to support some upcoming features.
There is a new Transport Monitor window that can be found under the Windows menu. In here you can monitor the data rate between the client and Applesauce hardware as well as get logs of any kind of failures in communication.
There has been a good amount of reverse-engineering work happening during this release. Support has been added for 3 new systems that most people probably never heard of: Lexitron, Data General, and Magnet System.
There was an issue loading IMD files into the Disk Writer under certain combinations, this has been fixed.
The flux imager could annoyingly keep trying to highlight the disk name metadata when you were trying to type other metadata while the disk was being imaged. Fixed.
The Speed Test for Apple 5.25 drives that don’t contain a sync sensor could sometime refuse to work. Fixed.
Many more smaller improvements and bug fixes all over that I am too lazy to list out in this release note.

21 August 2023 – Release 1.86.1

The option to export disks as a set of files from the Disk Analyzer broke in 1.86. Working again.
The MOOF format now supports Apple Twiggy disk images.

20 August 2023 – Release 1.86

The Mastering process in the Disk Analyzer now supports the verification markers. This allows disks that are being written to be able to also be verified. When using Autogenerate Markers, it will also create the verification markers for you if the analyzer understands the disk structure. Complex copy protection may need to be marked manually. Verification makers will be loaded and saved within MMK files. I’ll update the Mastering section of the wiki soon to cover the new functionality.
I’ve gotten back into doing more Apple II-centric work recently. Improvements have been made to the recognition of trickier sector markers, like ones that start with just a single nibble. Back in the day, there was a popular cracking tool called Advanced Demuffin which allowed you to copy sectors from a disk that used changed sector markers or custom nibble encoding tables. It would “normalize” these onto a new disk so that you could play around with it in a sector editor. Applesauce now offers this functionality when you export a copy protected 13/16 sector disk or a 3.5 disk. If applicable, there will now be export options a “normalized” disk. Also works for Mac disks.
I broke the loading of IMD and TDO in the last release, working again.
The flux timing graph in the Disk Analyzer now properly highlights the correct fluxes when selecting nibbles while viewing the track in an alternate encoding.
Some cleanup to the reconstitution of Apple Lisa Twiggy disks. It now correctly generates the sequence of A9 nibbles before the first sector of each track.
Processing C64 disks won’t barf out hundreds of log messages if the disk id for sectors don’t match the correct one (typically done for copy protection).
Some small cleanup and improvements to the flux and fast imagers.
Still continuing with some cleanup and modernization of the source code.

30 July 2023 – Release 1.85.1

I missed the setting of some flags when loading A2R files in the last release. This is now fixed.
More improvements to automatic encoding recognition.
Restored proper functionality of the side auto detection in the Flux Imager.
Fixed the loading/writing of Apple DSK, D13, and DO images.
A few improvements to DMK handling and other TRS-80 goodies.
HFE now has better encoding detection and support for creation from images done on an Apple Disk II.
Fixed visualization of disks imaged on Apple Disk II.
Improvements to rotating disk images in the Disk Analyzer.
Lots more little bits of code cleanup.

23 July 2023 – Release 1.85

Support for loading TeleDisk TD0 images including the checksum validation for all sector data.
Big improvements to Amiga analysis, data recovery, and issue logging.
Improved issue logging for IMD files and proper support for sectors that are missing data fields.
Better signal analysis when determining the encoding of tracks that contain sectors written by multiple drives with mismatched spindle speeds.
Improved format recognition and more issue logging when loading disk images that contain bitstreams (like WOZ, MOOF, HFE).
Added support for imaging/analyzing FutureData disks. These were 8” disks that used a custom 5:4 GCR encoding.
Fixed some edge cases when looping MFM and M2FM disks with data that crosses the disk index.
Fixed a crash when using Continuity Camera to capture pictures of disks with your iPhone/iPad.
Fixed problem that could cause Disk visualizations to not render some tracks if it couldn’t interpret them.
HFE files that don’t include proper encoding information now default to MFM instead of failing to load.
Fixed the analysis of Victor 9000 disks that I broke in a previous release.
Tons more small fixes as well as a bunch of refactoring work intended to help out with future features.

13 June 2023 – Release 1.84.2

I broke the support for many Apple II and Mac 400K/800K disks in the last point release. Working again.
Fixed the exporting of some hard sector disk formats from the Fast Imager that were previously not showing any formats.
You can now copy and paste nibbles while in the Nibble Stream view of the Disk Analyzer.
Improved the detection of M2FM disks.

10 June 2023 – Release 1.84.1

NEW FIRMWARE 2.57: Increased the size of the index buffer as 32-sector hard sectored disks could cause a buffer overflow and crash the hardware.
Added new hard sector configuration parameters: addrMarkerBitMask, dataMarkerBitMask, and sectorVerify.
Some improvements to encoding detection on hard sectored disks.

27 May 2023 – Release 1.84

In the Disk Analyzer, you can now choose to show track nibbles in whichever encoding you want (pop up in the Show Tracks As area of the top toolbar). This comes in especially handy for tracks that use mixed encoding formats like FM and MFM. Editing fluxes also happens in the currently selected encoding.
Official support for 3” floppy drives.
IBM sector format now limits what it considers to be valid data field markers. This was getting things confused with certain copy protection schemes.
Flux imaging with Apple 5.25 drives now checks for sync sensor signal later in the startup process to give the floppy drive a bit more time to get up to speed.
NEW FIRMWARE 2.56: Adds an additional delay when connecting to Apple 3.5 drives. Some 3rd party drive take a long time to initialize their firmware and this makes more of those drives compatible. I’m looking at you Applied Engineering.
Drive Probing now sets a default of 500ms when switching media density on 3.5” 3mode drives. This was causing track 0 to be read at the wrong speed in some circumstances on these drives. If you using a 3mode drive, I recommend that you edit the configuration for it.
FAT parsing was broken for some 360K Atari ST disks. Fixed.
Support for Macintosh PACE copy protections that use an unstable last nibble in protection sequences.
Fix when loading some flux formats when their tracks lengths held unexpected values.
Fixes for loading of DC42 files with unusual format bytes.
Improved the export of MFI disk images. Also fixed an issue with incorrectly outputting non-written tracks into MFI images.
Fixes to loading of SCP disk images, including a fix for failure to load images containing more than 82 tracks.
Better support for 40-track 3.5” disks.
Recognition of more Apple II CP/M text files (like DOC).

1 March 2023 – Release 1.83

The way drives are powered has been changed in this release. The client software would previously power cycle the drive when moving between different views of the Drive Controller window (fast imager, flux imager, etc). This power cycling will no longer happen. This change allows drives like the Applied Engineering 3.5” drives for Apple computers to now work properly.
Some improvements to sector repairs in the disk analyzer.
Viewing files could sometimes cause a crash if there were corrupt unused sectors at the end of the file.
In very rare circumstances, the analyzer could get confused about whether a corrupt IBM-format sector was protection or not. Fixed.
An error message is now displayed if you attempt to export a file to a drive in which you do not have permission to write.
Display an alert if trying to wipe the disk but the Applesauce is in Safe mode.
Diagnostics: If an Apple 3.5” drive fails the Spindle test, it will no longer terminate the test. If the Apple 5.25” Speed Test fails due a lack of signal, then an appropriate message is shown instead of failing silently.
Apple CP/M: Better support for filenames that have high bits set.
Heath/Zenith HDOS: Support for 16-sector disks as well as cleaning up disk labels that use graphical escape sequences so that they display properly.
Camera: When deleting an image, that image slot will now be automatically selected so that you can immediately replace it.

7 February 2023 – Release 1.82

When the Fast Imager was performing Retry Bad on disk formats that require double captures (due to poor checksum algorithms), it could sometimes visually revert a partially good sector capture to a bad one. Internally it still has the good sector data and will save it, but visually it was confusedly showing the wrong state. Fixed.
When imaging some IBM sector formats, the Fast Imager could sometimes not see a change in sector geometry if the encoding type (FM/MFM) also didn’t change. Fixed.
The Analog Test could crash under rare circumstances, fixed. The noise portion of the test has been tweaked a bit to now show a “theoretical max” line. This is basically the maximum number of bit cells that could fit on a track. You want your results to be as far a possible below that line.
Fixed an issue with the Diagnostics Speed Test hanging in the rare case of receiving an error from the drive.
Improved detection of early FAT file system disks.
Improved geometry detection when analyzing some file systems.
Fixed potential crash when processing HDOS (Heathkit) file system.

21 January 2023 – Release 1.81.1

Added support for exporting MAME MFI disk images.
Improved file system handling of early DOS disks (pre-FAT12).
Exporting from kfraw disks with a “.” in the name was having the name truncated when saving.
Kfraw loading now performs better sanity checking and adaption to bad index information.
Prevent a crash that could occur when opening particular disks from the Finder.

16 January 2023 – Release 1.81

Improvements to detection of MFM encoding when tracks are using certain bit patterns.
Better detection of FM markers for some hard sectored formats. Also better handling of sectors that are difficult to read.
Fixed looping of tracks whose data resulted in an ambiguous loop point.
Starting the app from the Finder by opening disk images of certain hard sector formats could result in the disk image format not being detected properly.
Added a tool tip for extra long volume names if you mouse over the volume name in the file system view of the disk analyzer.
Flux Imager won’t output a side 1 png file for single sided disks.
Added PACE protection support for sequences that used weak bit values.
Added support for the detection of Digidesign copy protection used on authorization disks.
Support for Rockwell System 65 disks.
Some improvements to H17 export from within the Disk Analyzer.
Disk Analyzer could be tricked into trying to perform a CRC calculation on a few terabytes of data. This would take a while and make people think that the app had frozen. Fixed.

31 December 2022 – Release 1.80.1

Allow D88 file export from FAT12 formatted disks. Also cleaned up a couple small D88 loading edge cases.
Some disks were not properly recognizing ATX as a viable export format.
Fixed H17 disk export for missing sectors from the Fast Imager. It is now reporting missing sectors using a 0x40 status.
Support in Fast Imager for properly setting write protected status when exporting some disk formats.
Fixed a crash that could happen with malformed Macintosh MFS disks.

28 December 2022 – Release 1.80

Next generation of Apple GCR data decoding as well as a new advanced data correction system. It is even better at detecting and repairing bad data and disk with marginal signals.
Apple II 3.5” / Macintosh: Sector comparisons can now be done while ignore tag bytes.
Macintosh: Improved cleanup of PACE copy protection sectors.
Lisa: Better handling of some forms of file system corruptions.
NEC: Added read/write support for d88 disk image format.
TRS-80: Improved handling of DMK images where tracks have mixed density sectors.
Apple II: Improved handling of some NIB files.
Camera: Added optional auto-cropping of images.

3 December 2022 – Release 1.79

You can now save/load Mastering Marks in the Disk Analyzer! There is a new MMK file format that contains the necessary mastering info. So, if you figure out the proper marks for say a WOZ file, you can now provide the MMK for other users to be able to write the same WOZ file.
New hot keys for Adding Write Start and Write End Markers.
Edit Marker Info command that can be used to view/edit the Leader Nibble settings for Write Start Markers. If you hold the Shift key while adding a Write Start Marker, then it will automatically open up the Edit screen to set Leader Nibbles.
Mastering writes when using Leader Nibbles will now more accurately locate the actual start of the data on the media surface.
Fixed regression in Fast Imaging for disks that label side 1 sectors as an extension of side 0.

23 November 2022 – Release 1.78

There have been many requests from users for a method to support photography of floppy disks as add an additional form of metadata when imaging disks. So, this release introduces the Camera window! It is available under the Window menu or by pressing Command-1. It utilizes any camera that can connect up to your computer and be used as a webcam. Simply use it to take the pictures you desire (up to 4 of them), and then image the disk. When you save the disk image from the flux or fast imager, it will automatically also save all of the snapshots to the same place and name them to match the disk image. It couldn’t be simpler to use!

Another major addition for this release are some powerful new signal enhancing and data recovery routines in the Disk Analyzer for FM and MFM disks. This is all happening behind the scenes, but it is proving to be much better at reading failing/dirty disks and in many cases is able to successfully recover sectors that no other disk image tools think are salvageable.

Improved handling when loading WOZ or MOOF images containing flux tracks.
Fix for detecting single-sided 160K FAT disks.
A couple of crashes have been eliminated.

10 November 2022 – Release 1.77.2

Many enhancements to DMK loading/exporting.
HFE export now supports tracks with multiple encodings.

6 November 2022 – Release 1.77.1

Fast Imager exporting of DMK files with mixed track densities had a bug which would result in a corrupted FM track. This was impacting TRS-80 disks that had an FM track 0 with the rest of the disk being MFM.

5 November 2022 – Release 1.77

New system for handling Write Precompensation. There is now a curve view that allows for much more complex precompensation profiles. Profiles can also now be saved and reused.
Tracks that have varying sector sizes have much improved display in Physical Sector view in Disk Analyzer.
MOOF image creation via the Fast Imager had a bug where it could drop Macintosh/Lisa tag bytes. This primarily impacted LisaOS disks as the Macintosh MFS and HFS didn’t use the tag bytes. This has now been fixed. Exporting MOOF files from the Disk Analyzer has always exported the tag bytes correctly.
Initial support for disks that have mixed MFM and FM sectors on the same track. Like dual boot disks for TRS-80 Model I and III. Tracks like this are now detected/logged and you can see the sectors in the Physical Sectors view. Support still needs to be added to the DMK format for these tracks.
Added identification/handling of a newly discovered variant of the PACE protection on Macintosh disks.
Better UI experience when a disk is being patched by the Disk Analyzer, like when anonymizing LisaOS disks.
Loading MFI disks that don’t have a form factor specified will now ask the user to identify the disk type. Also fixed a MFI loading bug that could mess up the track seam and incorrectly show invalid sectors.
A fix to the loading of Atari ST disks which sometimes would fail to load.

22 October 2022 – Release 1.76

The disk analyzer now features the ability to simply re-save (cmd-s) disk images instead of needing to re-export them if you make changes to the disk.
The Metadata Editor and metadata handling throughout the app has been improved in order to more easily add metadata support for additional disk image formats. Added metadata support for IMD and H17 images.
Fast Imager has a new button directly under the “Save” button labeled “Edit Meta”. After you save an imaged disk, if the format of the disk allows for metadata, then the “Edit Meta” button will be enabled. Pressing this button will open up a window that lets you edit the metadata of the saved image(s).
Added the ability to de-serialize/anonymize copy protected Apple Lisa disks. When you open a Lisa disk, a note will be added to the Analysis Logs pane if the disk is copy protected (f there is no note, then the disk is not currently protected). This note has an “Anonymize Disk” button. If you press the button, then the disk image will be de-protected. Then simply hit cmd-s to re-save your disk image.
IBM sectored disks will now have messages logged when tracks use divergent sector layouts or encodings. A big help for detecting copy protection or unusual disk formats.
Added support for saving Lisa Twiggy disks as DC42. Also added a sanity check to the format byte to better handle malformed DC42 images.
Fixed a crash that could happen in the Fast Imager when trying to image a 360K PC disk in a Disk II drive.
Improved support for DART “Better” compression. There were some edge cases that were causing the decompressor to be unable to load some disks. Turns out there is a bug in the original DART compressor.
In the Compare/Repair screen, it was possible to make the diff pane stop displaying data, this has been fixed.
Added a new tool under the Tools menu that will generate a MAME Software List Entry for the disk in the active analyzer window. This will generate the XML code with the crc32 and SHA1 hashes automatically calculated for you. The entry will be placed in your clipboard ready to be pasted it into the desired XML file.
The disk analyzer window is left in a more attractive state if the disk image fails to load.

11 October 2022 – Release 1.75

This release is celebrating the Apple Lisa. Debuting in 1983, the predecessor to the Macintosh hasn’t received much love in the disk preservation community. We are hoping that we can help change that.

Added support for Twiggy disks. The 8 speed zones, disk geometry, sector structure, and the ability to recreate disk that are flux-level identical to what the Lisa created. Note that 400K Lisa 3.5” disks have long been supported.
Added File System Translator that handles LisaOS v1, v2, and v3. Lisa Workshop disks also supported. This enables you to view and export files, as well as allowing the Fast Imager to provide bad sector feedback on affected files.
Lisa Monitor FST now supports twiggy disks.
Parsing of Lisa text files in order to display as on the Lisa.
Support for loading DC42 images generated by BLU (twiggy and 3.5”), including the way they marked bad sectors.
Support for big-endian Apple Pascal.
Search function in the Disk Analyzer will now also search sector tag data.
Fixes to disk mastering when writing partial disks.
Clarified some text related to the mastering process when referring to cylinders vs tracks.
A bit of UX cleanup here and there.

3 October 2022 – Release 1.74

New bulk processor named Catalog Disks that will generate directory listings for image files and save them into individual txt files.
Writing MFM disks now have improved write precompensation handling. It is automatically handled from the Disk Writer. From within the Mastering system of the Disk Analyzer, you can now specify custom write precompensation settings.
The Flux Imager had issues detecting double sided disks if the disk used mixed encodings and had a large number of sectors per track. Fixed.
Improvements to repairs of IBM sectored disks.
When exporting files from a Mac HFS or MFS disk, the modified date of files could be incorrect when the file used a resource fork. Fixed.
Lots of UI cleanup and small bug fixes.

26 September 2022 – Release 1.73

Support for Commodore 1571 disks and the D71 image format.
Improvements to the Compare/Repair feature of the Disk Analyzer.
Restored DC42 image output from fast imager for HFS HD disks.
Support for ED 2.88M disks.
Improvements to DMK support for handling non-standard markers, missing tracks, and other copy protection techniques.
Better filtering of garbage tracks when loading HFE disk images.
Improvements to M2FM encoding detection.
Fix display of FAT directory when file has a missing/invalid date.
Improved detection and logging of Mac bit slip copy protection.
Lots of additional internal improvements and small UI cleanups.

17 September 2022 – Release 1.72.1

I accidentally broke the fast imager file exporting. Fixed now.
Improvements to the detection of tracks with valid signals.
Fixed issue with exporting IMD files that have excluded sectors due to varying sector sizes (not supported by the format).
More C64 improvements.

16 September 2022 – Release 1.72

The Fast Imager gets a big power up this release with support for imaging disks that have mixed track formats (like an FM-encoded track 0 with the rest being MFM). It also now supports disk whose tracks change geometry, like using different sized sectors between tracks. Also some big additions to some of the data recovery techniques.
Improvements to reading of DEC RX02 formatted disks.
Improvements to DMK import and export.
Fixed regression in reading of C64 disks.

9 September 2022 – Release 1.71

More updates to the Mastering system. You can now specify which tracks you would like to target in the Auto-generate markers sheet. There is also a new Delete Markers on Track sheet that makes it easier to clear multiple tracks.
For people that love to use hardware drive emulators, Applesauce now supports HFE disk images. Export them to use in your emulator, or load them to analyze/write to a real floppy. No HFEv3 support currently.
The Disk Writer will now automatically wipe in-between tracks when writing 35/40-track disks to 80-track drives.
The Disk Analyzer screen now displays the format details of the currently selected track in the upper-bar of the screen.
Loading DMK disk images into the Disk Analyzer is now supported.
Added support for handling Tandy 2000 MS-DOS file system.
I broke the loading of Atari 8-bit ATR images in ED and DD densities in the last release. Working properly again.
A bunch of smaller fixes and UI cleanup.

3 September 2022 – Release 1.70

The most anticipated feature of this release is a powerful new disk writing system that works from the Disk Analyzer. Almost anything that can be loaded into the analyzer can also be written to disk, including copy protected software! But, using this feature effectively does require that you have at least a basic understanding of how disks are structured for your platform. Detailed information can be found on wiki.applesaucefdc.com under Advanced Disk Writing in the Using the Software section.
Added support for the Micro Technology Unlimited MTU-130. Pretty cool and rare 6502-based computer. The 8” disks can be read and written with Applesauce. I have also reverse-engineered its CODOS file system in order to allow the viewing/extraction/validation of files.
Added the ability to rotate a disk within the disk analyzer. This allows you to do things like reset a disk index. Just select a nibble in the nibble view and then under the Disk menu, choose “Rotate Disk to Start at Selection”.
For the Disk Analyzer, under the Mastering menu is a new “Normalize Flux Timings of Selection” option. This will clean up the flux timings of the selected nibbles.
The Disk Analyzer will now process a2r files that only contain timing captures.
Fixed an issue with exporting Mac HD disks from the Fast Imager in moof format being corrupted. Exporting HD disks as moof from the Disk Analyzer worked properly.
Support for the new H17Disk 2.0 image format for Heath/Zenith hard sectored disks.
Fixed a bug where corrupt FAT volumes could crash the app.
Under the Mastering menu, the item “Export Track as Flux Timings” has been renamed to “Track Requires Flux Accuracy”.
Lots more little bits of cleanup like alert boxes in macOS 11+ supporting red button text for destructive operations.

21 August 2022 – Release 1.69.4

Fixed issue with loading some IMG images, including the images that Disk Writer uses for formatting 3.5″ PC disks.
Continuing to fix small bugs and perform general cleanup in the app.

19 August 2022 – Release 1.69.3

Fixed issue with fast imaging some single sided hard sector formats.
Heath HDOS volume and file names now get cleaned up to remove escape sequences and control characters when showing this information within Applesauce or when exporting files.

18 August 2022 – Release 1.69.2

FAT12 support has been enhanced to identify older forms of FAT that predate the inclusion of the BIOS Parameter Block, like MS-DOS 1.x.
Added DMK export support for 8″ disks.
Added Heath/Zenith as a Platform option in metadata entry/editors.
Heathkit HDOS has been enhanced to also cover soft-sectored disks.
Hard sector format configs now has a “trackCountsPossible” parameter that can be used to identify disk formats that allowed for multiple track counts, like 40 and 80 track variants of the format.
Fixed the Fast Imager “Sides to Image” selection for 8” soft sectored disks.
Cleaned up word wrap issue in Fast Imager for disks with very long volume names.

12 August 2022 – Release 1.69.1

Have I mentioned that I like to break the Heathkit H-17 imaging? Well, fixed it again.
Preserving file dates when exporting Heathkit HDOS disks.

12 August 2022 – Release 1.69

More Heathkit H-17 work. Improved disk writing of H8D files. Added loading/writing support for 80 track disks. Imaging of 80 track H-17 disks still needs some work.
Support for Heathkit HDOS has been added allowing you to extract and view files as well as Fast Imager identifying affected files when disk has bad sectors.
Fixed loading of Apple II EDD files that was broken a couple releases ago.
Minor UX cleanup and bug fixes.

9 August 2022 – Release 1.68.3

Improvements to Heathkit H-17 disk loading and writing. Supports detecting HDOS via heuristics and capturing/using volume id.
Added ability for Prober in Drive Configuration screen to detect 3.5″ drives that support 3mode as used by many Japanese systems.

6 August 2022 – Release 1.68.2

Fixed the fast imager support for hard sectored disks that I broke really well in 1.68.1.
Fixed a potential crash when loading some images into the disk analyzer.

5 August 2022 – Release 1.68.1

Accidentally broke support for hard sector disk formats that use both an address and data field. Fixed.
The fast imager would ignore the Side To Image setting while it was trying to determine the disk format. Fixed.

4 August 2022 – Release 1.68

Need to write a hard sectored disk for your North Star or Heathkit computer? Now you can do it from your Applesauce! The firmware has been upgraded to support proper hard-sectored writing, and I have added the ability to load and write NSI (SSSD, SSDD, and DSDD) and H8D files.
Tweaks to improve the analysis of Apple IWM format disks (Apple II 5.25″ + 3.5″ and Macintosh 400K/800K disks).
Flux view in the disk analyzer now shows index marks.
Some compatibility improvements when Probing drives in the Drive Configuration screen.
Tweaks to improve the analysis of disk formats by Chuck Peddle (Commodore and Victor).
Improved automatic disk repairs for hard sectored disks.
Many additional fixes and improvements.

31 July 2022 – Release 1.67

More cleanup to Fast Imager including properly supporting unusual sector interleaves when saving to IMD and DMK formats.
The Disk Analyzer now lets you Edit > Copy data selected in the Nibble View. It will be copied to the pasteboard as an ASCII string of hex values. You can also Edit > Delete selections if you want to quickly remove garbage from a track.
Added support for exporting G64 files with a track length more than 7928 bytes. This was an older limitation in the G64 specification. There are still some emulators that may not like when this happens, but we are going to let that be the emulators problem as we want to always export the track accurately.
Added links to the Help menu to get to the website and wiki.
Fixed potential drain of CPU resources when processing tracks with a particular type of damage.
The Flux Imager would sometimes get overzealous when reporting that you are imaging a disk at the incorrect speed. Successfully told it to temper its enthusiasm.
In some Chunk Peddle disk formats (Commodore and Victor), it was possible for sector write seams to trigger a false hash collision warning. Fixed.
Some other visible tweaks were made for some upcoming feature work.

26 July 2022 – Release 1.66

The major feature of this release is the inclusion of a system to allow users to create their own disk format definitions to be used by Applesauce. There is now an Applesauce folder in your user’s Documents folder where files will be stored that can expand the features of the client program. Within the Formats folder, you will find two files: hardsector_config.json and ibmsector_config.json. You can use these files to create new hard sector disk formats as well as formats that are variants of the standard IBM sector formats. There is a link to documentation for each located within the json files.

Fixed bug when exporting Apple II disk that had missing tracks. The exporter should have been providing a full empty track worth of data, but instead was not outputting any data for the track.
The behavior of the Fast Imager’s Autofill feature has been modified. The autofill will place the volume name into the Product Title field only if the user has not entered a title there already. If a title has been entered, then the autofill will populate the disk/side name instead.
Export of MOOF files would fail if the disk is single sided, but there is some other garbage data on the back of the disk.

16 July 2022 – Release 1.65

Added support for loading and writing Apple Disk Copy 6.x image files.
When reprocessing a track in the disk analyzer, it will now also re-check the flux encoding of the track.
Added a fallback check in diagnostics for PC 3.5″ drives that exhibit non-standard write protect line behavior.
Fixed a crash that could happen while analyzing damaged disks.

10 July 2022 – Release 1.64

This is another release with some major refactoring going on under the hood. Lots of improvements to code organization that result in much easier addition of new disk formats and encodings. The entire system also now uses my next generation data separator that looks to have vastly improved tracking of data on disks that are in poor condition.

Fast Imager has been revamped a bit for even better data recovery.
Cleaned up notices in Flux Imager when performing imaging at the incorrect speed or while lacking a sync sensor.
Added support for custom CRC polynomials, rev in, and rev out in hard sectored disk format definitions.
Improvements to the detection of non-standard disk geometries.
Improved sensitivity in the Analog Characteristics tests.
When using the Visualize Disk function, there is now an option to export the rendering as a vector file in SVG format. Thanks to Lane Roathe!
Much improved support for Commodore 1541 disks along with the export of copy-protected G64images. Logging of many copy protection schemes is now working in the analyzer. Sector repairs are also now supported.
Added support Exxon 500 series 5.25″ hard-sectored disks.
Improved Victor 9000 disk analysis and repairs.
Some improvements to analyzing copy protected Apple DOS disks.
Bulk a2r to woz processing now shows copy protection logs for each disk.

6 June 2022 – Release 1.63.2

The Stability Validator in the Sync Sensor Assistant was malfunctioning. This has been fixed.

5 June 2022 – Release 1.63.1

Fixed an issue with USB communication between the client and hardware becoming out of sync under very specific circumstances. This was reported to be happening while using the Probe Drive function when configuring PC drives, and would often falsely report that it was unable to write to the disk. It could also occur in the Diagnostics screen.
Fixed the output of flux tracks in .WOZ and .MOOF files.
Fixed the looping of Apple II tracks from legacy A2R files that only contain timing data.
Added a Victor 9000 entry to platform metadata editor and flux imager.
Added support for Micropolis Mod II hard sectored disks.
Try not to crash when loading SCP files that have corrupted data in them.

15 May 2022 – Release 1.63

Some users were having issue with the imaging process hanging up while running under VirtualBox. This is hopefully resolved now.
Diagnostics for Apple 3.5 drives was incorrectly failing all write tests. Fixed.
Analog Characteristics test was incorrect for Apple 3.5 drives. Fixed.
Saving solved tracks into A2R files have been turned off until I can do some cleanup to the code.
Fixed an issue with an error repair routine for Apple II disks that would cause it to take a long time to process.
Cleaned up the CoCo RS-DOS detection in order to eliminate false positives.
The raw sector loader for IMG files will also now attempt to work with images with a DSK extension.

29 April 2022 – Release 1.62.2

Fixed regression in disk analyzer when processing Apple II disks.
Fixed an issue with the disk analyzer not replacing tracks in some cases.
Better handling of bad sectors when exporting as an IMD.
Disk analyzer support for IBM sectored disks that mark sectors on side 1 of a disk as being a continuation of side 0 (like Kaypro CP/M).

25 April 2022 – Release 1.62.1

Fix crash in Fast Imager when imaging disk with unusual sector numbering like Ampro CP/M.
Fixed Apple 3.5 diagnostics check for disk inserted signal.
Automatically dismisses the Drive Picker screen if Applesauce is disconnected.
Tweak FM detection to hopefully have fewer false positives.
Updated the Sparkle update software.

23 April 2022 – Release 1.62

This has been one of the longest release cycles ever for an Applesauce update. A tremendous amount of work went into this release as I was performing some very foundational changes to how Applesauce works. Previously, analysis of fluxes was happening with an accuracy down to 125 nanoseconds, but all analysis is now accurate down to 1 nanosecond. And several operations work on the picosecond level to ensure optimal accuracy. This change has proven to make for better data capture and repair, as well as enabling some upcoming advanced features. To go along with this improvement, the firmware has been optimized to allow the hardware to capture flux timings at 200% higher resolution, but with almost no extra bandwidth or storage increase. Yes, higher resolution A2R files that are most often the same size as the lower resolution version.

Another big focus of this release has been a completely revamped disk writing system. The new system allows for greater precision down to 20 nanoseconds. Most disks can now be written including crazier disk layouts like the Victor 9000. I’m still finishing up the client side of writing copy protected disks, but the hardware side of things is now ready.

There are also many new small features as well as dozens of bugs fixed.

Fixed visual bug when showing bad files in catalog of Apple II CP/M disks.
More reliable imaging of Atari 8-bit disks due to better detection of disks written at 288rpm.
Improved detection of some obscure IBM sector structure usage as well as more advanced copy protection detection and logging.
Improvements to repairs in Apple II and Macintosh disks.
Supports export of copy protected Atari 8-bit disks in ATX format.
Supports loading of MAME MFI disk images.
Added Tandy Color Computer DOS file system viewing.

06 March 2022 – Release 1.61.3

More improvements to IMD handling of bad sectors and loading.
Bulk Processor for rendering double-sided visualizations was not working properly. Fixed.
The Find command support a new ~ (tilde) token for hex searches. Anything after the ~ will be searched for after finding the pre-tilde sequence. So searching for DEAA~F7F9 will look for the DEAA sequence and then it will search the next 128 bits for the sequence F7F9. The F7F9 nibbles don’t even need to be synchronized. This was added specifically to search for a desynchronized copy protection sequence, but can be useful for other things as well.
Better handling of IBM-structured disks that contain an extra sector on track 0. This was frequently used as copy protection for Atari ST and other platforms.
The Metadata Inspector for WOZ files was changing the INFO chunk version in cases where it should not have been. Fixed.
Apple II CP/M processing was not correctly marking files with I/O errors.
Exported dates for files from Apple Pascal and Lisa Monitor disks were building faulty date timestamps.

22 February 2022 – Release 1.61.2

Fixed looping bug with flux images that contain a single index-to-index rotation.
Fixed issue with loading FM/MFM-based sector images that use 1024 byte or larger sectors.

21 February 2022 – Release 1.61.1

More Fast Imager geometry detection improvements.
Fix to IMD export when disk contains corrupted or copy protected tracks.

20 February 2022 – Release 1.61

Improved geometry detection in Fast Imager.
Fixed visual bug in sector displays for disks with more than 32 sectors per track.
Better logging for Apple II copy protections that do funny things with address fields.
Find function in Disk analyzer now supports M2FM disks.
More consistent detection of Commodore and Victor 9000 disk formats.
Fix potential crash in AtariDOS disks with corrupt sector chains.
Supports loading of 5.25″ ProDOS disks in .2MG format.
Added .diskcopy as valid extension for loading DiskCopy 4.2 images.

07 February 2022 – Release 1.60.1

Fast Imager was calculating the geometry incorrectly for disks that had an unformatted track 0.
A fix to IMD loading for some 8″ disks.

06 February 2022 – Release 1.60

There has been a major under the hood change to how Applesauce stores and manipulates low-level flux data. This change brings better efficiency and accuracy to many parts of the app. Hopefully I didn’t break anything with the work.
Fast imaging of 8″ disks in IBM 3470 and IBM 34 formats now supported.
Support for Intel M²FM disk encoding has been added. The Fast Imager can capture 8″ M²FM disks that use standard IBM sector structure.
Improved geometry detection for the Fast Imager.
The Fast and Flux imagers now have a new “sides to image” selector. The current functionality is contained within the “autodetect” option, but you can also now choose “single” or “double” to force single/double sided captures.
Previously, the Fast Imager would handle bad sectors by simply zeroing them out when you save the image (most disk image formats don’t support the concept of a bad sector). The Fast Imager will now mark sectors as bad within file formats that do support bad sectors, like .WOZ, .MOOF, .IMD, and .DMK. This will be a huge benefit when performing disk repairs.
The disk analyzer now supports 8″ disks.
Improved detection of disks that were imaged using the incorrect drive speed. Along with this comes automatic time-shifting with picosecond accuracy to correct the flux timings.
The stream recognizer that is used to validate Apple II tracks with an unknown format has been temporarily disabled as the replacement is being finalized. It was deemed that the old recognizer was doing nothing useful at this point.
When exporting files from file systems that support date/time, the exported files will now maintain the original dates/times.
The .IMD exporter produces a cleaned up header that conforms more closely to the original specification.
Retry Bad in the Fast Imager will now zero the head after performing its work.
Fixed two potential AtariDOS crashes when directories contain corrupt data.

24 January 2022 – Release 1.59.1

Fixed askUserMedia sheet not being linked to parent window.
Also don’t allow for loading multiple .raw files and having it instantiate many copies of the same kfraw disk.

22 January 2022 – Release 1.59

Now supports loading KryoFlux Raw image files. While loading it also recognizes 5.25” double-density disks that were improperly imaged at 360rpm and will automatically time-shift them to 300rpm to correct them.
Opening IMD (ImageDisk) files is now supported. Exporting IMD files also has several improvements.
Improved support for SCP (SuperCard Pro) disk images.
Improved support for DFI (DiscFerret) disk images.
Double-sided Victor 9000 disks stored in IMG files now use proper non-interleaved structure to match actual hardware. Side 1 follows Side 0.
Improved geometry handling throughout the app, especially when it comes to disks that have varying numbers of sectors per track. These are properly outputted in IMD, DMK, and IMG formats now.
Improved geometry detection for sectors in Fast Imager. It was previously possible for it to calculate too many sectors per track under certain circumstances.
Victor 9000 improved double-sided detection in Fast Imager.
File system support for Victor 9000 MS-DOS.
When viewing files on FAT12 disks, it now does better detection for text files in order to display them as pure text.
Diagnostics for PC drives will now engage the motor when checking the write protect status as some drives require.
Apple II DOS 3.2/3.3 has improved handling of disks with partially corrupted catalogs.
Fixes to some file system exporters to ensure that exported files retain the proper file extension.
Minor cleanup and text changes.

7 January 2022 – Release 1.58

The save file name has now been separated into 2 parts. The first is the product name as before, and the second part can optionally be used for a disk number or other identification. What benefit does this have? Well, if you choose to create enclosing folders then the folder is named the same thing as the product name (without the disk number). This means that if you are imaging a product that uses a set of disks, then you can just change the disk name for each and it will save all of the disks into the same product folder. Previously it would make a new folder for each disk you saved.
The Show Catalog feature now highlights files with errors by showing the file entry in red.
If you stop the imaging while in progress, there is now a Resume button that will allow you to continue the imaging instead of needing to use the slower Retry Bad data recovery.
The imaging status text now includes the volume name after imaging has completed.
The Flux Stream Editor in the disk analyzer has some fixes where it wasn’t always showing correct nibble values for encodings whose nibbles don’t always start on a flux transition (like MFM, and GCR for Commodore and Victor 9000).
Ability to load Victor 9000 disks (single and double sided) contained in IMG files.
Improvements to the Compare/Repair function. It is much better at repairing/replacing highly damaged tracks.
Flux Imager will no longer overwrite the disk/side name if autofill is enabled but you have manually entered a name.
Apple II copy protections that used changed sector markers will now generate logs showing the changed markers.
Allow EDD files to be exported as WOZ.
Stream recognizer was overwriting neighboring quarter tracks when manually adding tracks to an image.
Head cleaning function in 5.25 flux imager was not working properly. Fixed.

18 December 2021 – Release 1.57

Official support for 8-inch drives is here! You can now specify them in the Drive Configuration screen. If you were being sneaky and already using an 8-inch drive with a 5.25-inch profile, then you should edit your profile to change it to 8-inch. This will be required for disk format detection.
Support for Victor 9000 disks (single and double sided). This system had a crazy variable-rate floppy drive that was coupled with a disk writng system that really wasn’t paticularly good at its job. It is highly recommended to only image these disks with the Fast Imager.
Low level support for handling disks with changing encodings or sector structures like using multiple sector sizes on a single track. This hasn’t been trickled up to the images as of yet, but the groundwork is now laid.
The Flux View in the Disk Analyzer now shows you the FM/MFM value (clock and data bits) along with the final nibble value.
The Find command in the Disk Analyzer will now allow you to search for desyncronized disk nibbles in FM/MFM encodings. And if you are trying to reverse engineer a new disk format, you can put an ! after a hex value in order to allow it to ignore clock bits for that value.
Improved support for disks that use multiple disk encodings (GCR, FM, MFM).
When doing volume name autofill in the fast or flux imagers, it will now be sure to trim whitespace from the ends of the volume name.
Saving 3.5 woz images from the fast imager could sometimes save an incorrect number of sides value to the woz header.
Fixes to Analog Characteristics tests for Apple 3.5 drives.
Can now export DMK files for disks that use multiple encodings, like TRS-80 disks that have FM encoding on track 0 with the rest of the disk being MFM.
Fixes to the Go command in the Disk Analyzer.
Some improvements to loading of SCP files.
IMD export now shows warnings for sectors that have bad data checksums.

4 December 2021 – Release 1.56

A new system has been created for processing hard-sectored disks. This will allow for the rapid implementation of support for new disk formats.
Added another data repair technique for disks using IBM sector structure.
Added DMK exporting for TRS-80 disks.
Improved IMD exporting.
Analog Chacteristics test has been revamped a bit to allow for drives with very tight filters to be able to run the test successfully. You can also now choose to run the tests while viewing head 0 and 1 (like existing) or against inner and outer tracks.
Cleaned up reporting of bad sector checksums on Apple 3.5″ GCR disks.
Apple II disks using standard sector structures will now log messages in the Disk Analyzer when they are using incorrect/invalid track/sector numbers.
Fixed crash in FAT12 file system parsing that was triggered by an Atari ST copy protection. Yes, a 30 year old copy protection that tried to make disk copiers crash is still doing it’s job.
Fixed logging of IBM sectors with a bad data checksum. It was sometimes using incorrect log messages.
Fixed potential crash in Mac MFS file system parsing if the directory structure is corrupted.
Improvments to flux reading that increase clock accuracy and prevent timebase decoupling for hard sectored disks with a high sector count.

20 November 2021 – Release 1.55

Lots of new techniques added for automatic and manual repairs of disks with IBM sector structures.
Improved repair routines for Apple 3.5 and 5.25 disks.
Added a Duplicate button to the Drive Profile Picker window. This allows you to make a copy of an existing profile. This can come in handy for things like making a profile that is limited to 35 tracks so that older 5.25 disks with the smaller media window can be safely imaged.
Heath hard sectored disks are now supported.
Fast Imaging of hard-sectored North Star and Heath disks is now supported.
Added exporting to NSI image format for North Star disks.
Added exporting to H8D image format for Heath disks.
Added exporting to IMD (ImageDisk) format.
Added support for disks with 500kbps FM streams.
Added new Reprocess Entire Disk command to the Disk Analyzer. This will allow you to re-initiate the processing of a disk from the raw sources. Upcoming features will use this.
Metadata saving for Atari 8-bit disks was messed up a bit and not saving the Systems or Requirements. Fixed.
Diagnostics could sometimes lock up if you unplugged your Applesauce while running tests.
When converting a disk to 40 tracks, the log messages now get properly remapped.
Fixed crash in Sync Sensor Assistant when trying to use the beeper when the Applesauce was not being powered.
Fixed bug preventing loading of DFI image files.

7 November 2021 – Release 1.54

Vastly improved experience when flux imaging hard sectored disks.
Disk Analayzer now shows index/sector signals on the flux timing graph.
Support for North Star disks has been added. Flux imaging and viewing in Disk Analyzer work, but I still need to add Fast Imaging and NSI file handling.
Applesauce could sometimes get confused when using PC drives that were low-density only.
The Clear Metadata button in the Flux Imager will no longer change the current Platform setting.
Analog Characteristics now allows you to specify the densty (Low or High) that you want to test.
Some diagnostics tests could become stuck if you unplugged your Applesauce while running the test.
Loading standard-sized IMG files that don’t contain a BIOS Parameter Block (like early MS-DOS disks, will now use a default geometry size.
Fast Imager could sometimes skip track 1 side 1 when imaging a 40-track disk in an 80-track drive. Fixed.
The disk search feature wasn’t taking you to the found physical sector when clicking on the search results.
Sectors over 512 bytes were not always appearing correctly in the Physical Sectors view.
DSK files for Apple II weren’t working properly in the Disk Writer. Fixed.
Apple II CP/M disks that used a special 140K mode instead of 128K could cause Applesauce to crash.
Improved the Head Cleaning pattern.

31 October 2021 – Release 1.53

Fixed a crash in the Disk Analyzer flux edit view if selecting invalid nibbles.
Drive Config/Probe will properly set sane defaults if you skip things like the HD test. It will also properly set sane values if you manually change the supported density. This was causing some drives to not be able to image some formats if you didn’t successfully complete a drive probe.
Flux imaging from a PC drive will now correctly require an index sensor or other sync mechanism.
Increased the tolerance for inrush current when powering up a drive. This was preventing some drives from powering up.
Fixed regression in loading of SCP files. The files were not being processed after loading.
Cleaned up some disk description messages when flux imaging from PC 3.5 drives.

29 October 2021 – Release 1.52

Added the ability to control the density pin for PC drives in the Speed Test in Diagnostics. Various fixes to the Diagnostics tests.
Improved the logical blocks display when looking at disks in the Disk Analyzer.
Refined the peak detection algorithm used for identifying disk encoding on disks to better filter tracks with large amounts of noise.
The Notes field of metadata wasn’t being saved. Regression occurred in release 1.50.
A bunch of other small fixes that I’m too lazy to list right now.

22 October 2021 – Release 1.51

Now can specifically detect an Atari ST disk separately from a FAT12.
Loading and Exporting of .ST files.
Fast Imager, Flux Imager, and Disk Writer should all work better with Atari ST disks and .ST files.
Allows you to save A2R files that have repairs and modifications made to it. This doesn’t change the raw captures of A2R file, but instead have a separate set of solver tracks. If you need to undo changes to a track, you can use the Reprocess Current Track in the Analysis menu. This will overwrite the track with one generated from the raw captures.
Metadata Requirements field was not being properly saved for some platforms. Fixed now.
The Flux Imager could be pushy about overwriting a platform selection you may have manually made. I told the Flux Imager to simmer down a bit.
Don’t allow the What Drive is Connected screen to be opened while the Applesauce is busy doing something else. This was causing issues.