Making images of old 5.25" Floppy

[lwizardl]

I was wondering if anyone here had experience with this. I have a few different types of 5.25" floppy disks that I want to image the disk contents.

 

MS-Dos

Apple IIc

TRS-80

 

I currently own an Apple IIc (not working), 386 PC with both 5.25" & 3.5" floppy drives. TRS-80 coco (not working). I know I could just download the software from the internet but I would prefer to do backups of my own disks.

 

Anyone know how I can do this ?

 

James

[Hatta]

Your DOS floppies are easy to image with your 386 and RAWRITE. Your Apple floppies would be easy with a working II and ADTPro. You can't dump an Apple disk with a PC, since the drives are physically incompatible. Apple drives are GCR, PC drives are MFM.

 

CoCo uses MFM, but the filesystem format is incompatible with PC. I don't know whether RAWRITE will be able to image these(probably not), but it's worth a shot.

[lwizardl]

I figured it would be best to get the systems working first. I also found this via google searches for howto guides on this. http://www.kryoflux.com/ kind of pricey but guess that works for about everything.

[Nebulon]

For the Tandy Color Computer 2, I use a Windows 98se machine with a 5.25" DS/DD floppy drive in it.

 

The Keil emulator allows for the PC to access CoCo diskettes.

 

If you have Win98se and the 5.25" drive, then everything you need is here:

http://www.voltage-control.com/cocotrns.html

 

You can make a copy of an existing Color Computer disk image, erase the existing files from it so that you have a blank virtual diskette, and simply copy files from a real diskette onto that disk image. Give the new disk image a name and you're good to go.

[lwizardl]

thank you for the information, that will let me read and save a few of them.

[MarkO]

I believe the sole purpose for the the SuperCard Pro is to make Images of ALL types of Floppies.

 

Does anyone know of any issues with the SuperCard Pro????

 

 

MarkO

[Charlie_]

For the coco a Win98/DOS machine with a 360K DSDD drive and the command line programs DSKINI and RETRIEVE will make floppies like a champ.

 

I'm not sure about the Apple IIc.. I use a ADTpro and the appropriate cable to make the disks using the IIc itself. I'd like to know if there is a way to make the apple disks on a PC like the one described above.

 

I have a floppy controller in that PC that is capable of doing SD. So, I can make Atari and TI99 disks with it. If I would be able to make the Apple II disks that would be great.

[The Usotsuki]

I don't think PC disk controllers are capable of writing GCR like Apple and Commodore used?

[Charlie_]

I don't think PC disk controllers are capable of writing GCR like Apple and Commodore used?

Probably right as I have never run across anything to make disks for either,

On the C64 I use a zoom floppy and a c= drive to make those disks.

[Nebulon]

Probably right as I have never run across anything to make disks for either,

On the C64 I use a zoom floppy and a c= drive to make those disks.

Hmmm.... I don't know of any utilities that write Apple II disks to images (just image to disk on the Apple via ADT Pro -- which you mentioned).

 

However, with a bit of hardware, it is possible to copy Apple II diskettes using a PC disk drive. I'm thinking of the Copy II PC board from Central Point Software. So the PC disk drives appear to be mechanically capable of it.

[Bruce Tomlin]

There's also the Catweasel disk controller card. Quite a few years ago I got one and the first thing I did was image all my MFM format disks. Most were TRS-80, so I used a program someone wrote for linux that imaged them to .DMK format. Atari 800 disks weren't much harder, except that the data is inverted and the motor was slowed down to allow an extra sector per track, so I had to tweak some parameters. I even had some CP/M floppies for Osborne and Kaypro.

 

Then I wrote some really hacky code to decode Apple II GCR tracks (both 13 and 16 sector), and Commodore GCR (which was a pain in the ass because it didn't have a dedicated address mark nibble), and read a bunch of other disks I had, but I didn't have anything to use them with. And I have no idea what to do about copy protection with either of those.

 

Once the tracks are read, you will still need a program that can pull files out of the disk image.

 

But this was like six or eight years ago, and archiving my old TRS-80 disks was all I really cared about, so I can't really help anyone now other than to mention that the Catweasel is out there. The version I used was a PCI card, I think the v4. The Catweasel basically returns the timing between magnetic inversions, which software can decode into whichever disk format, and can write disks the same way. (I never used it to write disks.)

 

And don't forget about the difference between 40-track and 80-track drives. 80 track drives can read both, but can't write 40 track disks unless you bulk erase the disk first with a tape eraser.

[lwizardl]

thanks for the info I have lots of reading to do it seems if I want to get a working setup for doing this

[fujidude]

For the MSDOS disks, imaging on a windows platform, I would use a program called EMT4WIN. In Linux just use DD. Can't comment on the other disk formats.

 

For manipulation of the files on the image file, try Disk Imager by junnno.

Edited December 16, 2014 by fujidude