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### 5.5 Using disk and tape images

The emulator is able to emulate disk drives and tape recorders if provided with suitable disk images or tape images. An image is a raw dump of the contents of the media, and must be attached before the emulator can use it. “Attaching” a disk or tape image is like “virtually” inserting a diskette or a cassette into the disk drive or the tape recorder: once an image is attached, the emulator is able to use it as a storage media.

There are five commands that deal with disk and tape images:

- Attach Disk Image
- Detach Disk Image
- Attach Tape Image
- Detach Tape Image
- Smart-attach a file

The first four commands are used to insert and remove the virtual disks and cassettes from the respective units. On the other hand, the last commands tries to guess the type of the image you are attaching from its name and size, and attaches it to the most reasonable device.

Supported formats are `D64`, `G64`, `P64` for disk images (devices 8, 9 and 10) and `T64` and `TAP` for tape images.

The ancient `X64` format is deprecated and subject for removal.

Notice that `T64` support is read-only, and that the cassette is automatically rewound when you reach its end. For actually emulating tape, the `TAP` format is highly recommended.

Another important feature is that raw Commodore BASIC binary files and .P00 files can be attached as tapes. As you can autostart a tape image when it is attached (see “Autostarting” an image), this allows you to autostart these particular files as well.

You can attach a disk for which you do not have write permissions: when this happens, the 1541 emulator will emulate a write-protected disk. This is also useful if you want to prevent certain disk images from being written to; in the latter case, just remove the write permission for that file, e.g., by doing a `chmod a-w`.

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