Multi Volume QIC concatonation tool, NSEG.exe
Current version 1.03, last modified 11/30/08

The nseg3.exe self extracting archive should contain the following
nseg.txt - this note
nseg.c   - source code
nseg.exe - a WIN32 console based executable
To actually modify the source and rebuild the executable you
also need to download the msbksrc.lzh archive and extract both
the include file, msqic.h, and the decompression code, qicdcomp.c.

For more documentation see "http://www.willsworks.net/msbackup.htm#MVQICFMT"

This program is a side effect of the larger, more robust msqic.exe
code.  It allows someone to convert a set of floppy disks containing
a compatible compressed multi-volume floppy based archive into the single 
file format expected  by msqic.  

Note MSQIC will only correctly extract files from the first disk in
a multi volume backup, but not subsequent disks as the offsets in
the catalog of the multi-volume backup are relative to the entire
backup, NOT the current file is as assumed in msqic.exe.  It was
easier to write a program to concatonate the multi-volume format
to a single file than it was to make msqic attempt to step through
multiple volumes, so you need a little extra disk space to make
this work, and its a muti step process.

You must successively read the individual disk files (or copies of them 
which have been transfered to a hard disk) and append their data to a single 
disk file, the output file specified on the command line.  You use different 
command line arguments to create and finalize the archive as outlined in the
usage message below:

usage: nseg <qic_file> [<output file>] [-c] [-f] [-o###] [-v]
use <output file> to decompress a file
 -c creates a new output file (default is append data at end of output file)
 -f finalize, write vtbl and catalog from this disk to output file
 -o seek to input data hex offset ### 
    (default is to start append immediately after headers)
 -v display vtbl with segment # and exit (use as the only option!)

With the first disk in the sequence, use the -c option with the
output file name to create a new output file.  With any intermediate 
disks, just specify the output file name and let the data be appended
to the output file.  With the last disk in the sequence use the -f
option and the output file name to close the file, ie rewrite the
VTBL header and append the catalog from the last disk in the series.

Note the current version will NOT proceed if the multi-volume flag is
not set, nor if the backup file is not compressed.
The source could be modified to work with uncompressed
multi-volume archives, but its probably easier to just use msqic's raw
data extraction for this.  See comments in the code and the copy_region()
routine in qicdcomp.c for more information.

The disks must be read in the correct order.  With luck they were labled
with some indication of their location in the order when the backup was
created.  If not, you can use nseg with just the input file name on
the command line, or additionally with the -v option to view all the 
header information for each of your files.  Look at the sequence number 
to determine the proper order for reading the files to create a
single concatonated *.qic file that msqic.exe can parse.

This version of nseg.exe will attempt to insert NUL bytes if a disk
in the middle of the sequence is missing, but this is untested.  No
promises about how things will work if you are missing disks. In this
case I can think of three options:
a) let nseg insert nulls, and accept that some of the recovery will
   fail when using msqic to restore missing file.
b) Use the -f option and finalize the concatonation with the last disk
   that is in sequence, then extract everything you can from the
   resulting partial backup file and do the remainder via option c.
c) Use the -r*.* option in msqic.exe to extract all files from each
   of the individual disk backup files.  Path information is lost,
   but can be restored by looking at the individual catalogs with
   msqic.exe and moving or renaming the files appropriately.

Good luck!