TheDisk Masher System (.dms) is an often used method on theAmiga, to create acompressed image of a disk (usuallyfloppy). The disk is readblock-by-block, and thus its data structure is maintained. DMS won approval particularly in thedemo scene and theWarez scene, since with this tool, disk images could generally be transferred easily withtelecommunicationmodems tomailbox networks likeFidoNet for efficient distribution.[1]
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[2] orXAD (software).
