 Smart Projects, IsoBuster bed time story 
IsoBuster, a bed time story
Chapter I : IsoBuster, just an idea.
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there was CD-i.
CD-i was a Philips format that could be played in special Philips consoles,
called CD-i players.
It was a funny format, the CD layout was often (and still is) not properly
understood by normal CD-ROM drives and the file-system was (and still is)
not supported by Windows.
At that same time there lived a funky dude, his name was Peter and his
colleagues thought he was a bit crazy, they still do actually.
Peter had a bunch of CD-i discs and although he realized they could never
really be played on Windows PCs he wanted to see the content and find ways
to extract that content, after all they contained mpg streams of his
favorite Monty Python sketches and other stuff like that.
So Peter strapped on his cape, and set out to achieve the impossible. As
caped crusader he was sighted first in a computer store where he bought a
book : "learn how to program C++ in 21 days". He took 21 days off from work
and started digging through the material. It was an interesting time and
Peter learned a lot.
Chapter II : IsoBuster on the shelve for a while.
Peter realised that he needed a pet project to be able to
actually put into practice the stuff that he was learning. And since he
didn't know enough about programming and the CD-i format yet, he created the
freeware program "Easy CD Menu". "Easy CD Menu" was unique and probably
first in its kind, the idea was to give people the ability to create a menu
for all the files that they wanted to put on their self-created CDs. For a
while Peter kept developing "Easy CD Menu", learning more about programming
and in the mean time absorbing as much as possible about CD technology. "Easy CD Menu" became
popular and Peter had to change the name to "Custom CD Menu" after an
ugly
mail from Adaptec. They claimed, probably with reason, that the name "Easy CD" was trademarked. The
more Peter learned about programming the more he realised that his "Custom
CD Menu" code was not ideal, to say it politely. He found himself digging
through spaghetti every day and decided the time for "IsoBuster" had come.
Chapter III : IsoBuster, the early days.
Starting from scratch again, these were exciting times. First being able to
open and close a drive tray, then getting the program to read sectors etc.
was fascinating. Because the program needed a catchy name, and because the
CD-i file-system resembles the ISO9660 file-system, ... and because it was
there to come to people's rescue ... the caped "IsoBuster" came to be.
IsoBuster could mount CDs in every-day normal CD-ROM drives built in
every-day normal Windows 95 PCs and could show and extract the file content
! And all this without making use of Windows but instead by by-passing the
Windows file-system drivers and by doing all communication and
interpretation by itself.
Actually the program could do much much more, it could also mount normal
(non CD-i) CDs and Video CDs and, again as first in its kind, it could open CD Image Files
like *.ISO files. This last feature became very popular and IsoBuster gained
a lot of popularity because of it.
Through the years CD formats evolved,
CD-R/W drives grew up, new optical disc formats were invented, other file
systems like UDF matured etc.. And Peter kept developing and making the
program better and better. He had fun helping people out rescue
data from CD-i, CDs and DVDs of various types and formats. Like any
normal caped crusader Peter had a demanding day time job where he worked
long days and travelled a lot, but when he had some spare time he strapped
on the old cape and fought the evil demon "data-loss".
When Peter's day-time-job company decided to leave for Taiwan he had a
difficult choice to make. He was one of the 'lucky' few that were asked to
move together with the company as expatriate to Taipei. But as he didn't see
himself moving abroad he declined. The company was quick to offer him a new job in
another company's stronghold much closer to where he lived but the long
drive every morning and evening was not something he pictured himself doing
for long, so he declined again. He was on his own now.
Chapter IV : IsoBuster to the rescue.
Today Peter is self employed and still works with lots of enthusiasm on
IsoBuster.
IsoBuster, once freeware, is now shareware BUT all the free features it once
had are still entirely for free. Only certain newer features, like UDF and
HFS require a registration.
The price of the product is deliberately kept low, to be able to provide a
solution to everybody who needs it.
Software piracy is one of the biggest frustrations of Peter, as every copy
stolen is felt directly in the pocket. To be able to pay the laundry costs
for all his capes and masks he does custom projects for other companies.
Mostly based on the technology he learned to master so well. This drains
away valuable time from IsoBuster development but things aren't always as we
want them to be.
Chapter V : IsoBuster, industry standard.
IsoBuster, and its author, are well respected within the optical media
industry. Besides data recovery or the odd saving a screaming girl from a
burning building, IsoBuster is used by various development teams in the hard
and software industry. In the forensics world IsoBuster proves to be a
valuable tool in the fight against criminals, Usama beware. Many experts
regard IsoBuster as best in its kind and not without reason. Daily, people
discover the power of IsoBuster and find new and interesting ways to use it.
E.g. to slipstream installation CDs, to investigate CD or DVD layouts and so
on. End users find that they can suddenly read CDs and DVDs created with
drag&drop write software like Direct CD, InCD, DLA, Drag2Disc etc., data
they thought was lost forever. People that were stuck with Mac CDs
containing their precious Word documents for instance now are able to copy
those to their Windows PC and edit them again.
For a full and lengthy list of the features visit :
www.isobuster.com
Chapter VI : IsoBuster, the future.
The future hasn't been written yet, which is good. Everything is still
possible and who knows what interesting things will come our way.
In the mean time the caped crusader remains at your service and the struggle
against "data-loss" continues. Plenty of material for a sequel.
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