[sgroup] Some history & best way to archive S-330 floppy disks to extract the samples.

Some background history. In the early 1990s I encouraged developers on the SGROUP mailing list to create what became known as the SAMDISK (SDISK, SMAC, etc) utility. My intention was not to propose anything fancy, just something to allow a track by track copy of the contents of a floppy disk for the Roland samplers to a single file, so it could be transferred via modem and of course the Internet. Then with software on the user's computer, to be able to re-create that entire disk. This was a way for someone on one side of the global to be able to share their samples they created with others. The method until then, was to actually mail blank floppy disks to a user on the SGROUP list, they could make copies and postal mail them back. SAMDISK worked fine, as their were versions created for the Mac, PC and others. Years later, I saw somewhere on the Roland web site they had adapted the SAMDISK format. I didn't ask for too much in the ways of features for this utility initially because at the time Roland wasn't releasing the file format of the disk or how the samples were constructed either. I figured if I made my proposal too lofty, it might not ever get done. I even called Roland to ask for info at the time, and was told the software development was done in Japan so they didn't even have source code to give my any pointers to pass on to developers in terms of file formats, length and purpose of the fields. Of course, I thought at the time it would have been nice to be able to extract specific samples from a Roland floppy disk, and do something with it, but what? In the early 1990s, many computers didn't have a sound card provided at the time of purchase except for the Mac. The concept of the Digital Audio Workstation was still very early and very expensive. I was very surprised at how the developers on the SGROUP took this concept and ran with it. Not only were versions created on several platforms to do as I hoped, they took it further to be able to actually extract a sample right from the floppy disk. I have really only used the SMAC for the Macintosh version. This brings us pretty much up to date. I still have my Roland S-330 in my studio along with about 200 floppy disks in Roland S-330 format. Many of them are samples I personally created and wish to archive them and put them in a modern generic universal format such as WAV and/or AIFF. Others contain samples I tweaked in some way, and some are from the old Roland Library when I bought my Roland S-330 that you were allowed to copy from the authorized dealer. With 200 floopy disks, this can be a big project. I also realize that configurations and settings unique to the Roland S-330 will be lost in the transfer. Please, I'm not asking once again developers on the SGROUP to create another project such as the Roland S-330 OS soft emulator. Really, I'm not. :-) What is the most up to date version of the SAMDISK utility regardless of platform to use that will do the best job of extracting samples? Mac, Windows? Which name and version software? If I recall correctly, the SAMDISK would create an image file, then you use the SAMDISK to open that image file and extract the samples, is this correct? I'm asking because I figure I might as well archive the image file. It is kind of amazing to realize that all 200 Roland sample S-330 floppy disks will easily be able to fit on a single CD-ROM (samples and image file), which costs less than what I paid for a single floppy disk at the time I bought the sampler. :-) Thanks in advance, David A. Roth david(a)roth-music.com NJ/NYC