Anyone heard of a Utility that will . . .

[atrax27407]

Does anyone know of a PC program that will

 

1) Read a TI-Formatted disk on the PC (on a 3.5" disk)

 

and

 

2) Output the disk as a .dsk file on the PC (to a 3.5" disk or appropriate folder).

 

Fred Kaal or Mivhael Zapf ?

 

I really don't want to transfer several thousand disks one at a time.

[HOME AUTOMATION]

Dedicated prgs + keybd MACRO.

[+mizapf]

Does anyone know of a PC program that will

...

 

yes, the programs that I recently posted here in the forum (floppyti.zip). I originally wrote them in order to create disk images from my real disk collection, pretty much what you are intending to do.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/277635-tipi-usage-and-support/?p=4170279

 

The programs are written for Linux. If you don't run Linux on one of your computer, you may try to install it in a virtual machine (VirtualBox or VMWare). I am quite sure that you can connect a real floppy drive to the virtually running Linux.

Edited December 9, 2018 by mizapf

[+FarmerPotato]

Does anyone know of a PC program that will

 

1) Read a TI-Formatted disk on the PC (on a 3.5" disk)

 

and

 

2) Output the disk as a .dsk file on the PC (to a 3.5" disk or appropriate folder).

 

Fred Kaal or Mivhael Zapf ?

 

I really don't want to transfer several thousand disks one at a time.

 

I have been using Kryoflux (sucessfully on Windows 7, 10, Mac OS X). I

 

It costs about €100. You get a USB peripheral, a disk controller, to which you attach your preferred floppy drive.

It takes about 1 minute to read a DSDD disk.

I wrote some scripts to change the output to V9T9/Classic99 DSK files. Mike Wright gave me a challenge to go to PC99 DSK format. Which one did you want?

[+9640News]

TI99-PC I think was the name would read TI diskettes. It was written by Paolo Bagnaresi. It required an older PC and you had to have a 360K (5.25" or 3.5") versus a HD drive. Big thing was getting a floppy controller interface. The program ran from a MS-DOS prompt.

 

Windows 95 PC's of the time were sufficient if you had a floppy interface on the system with a CMOS setup to set the drive type up correctly.

Beery

Edited December 10, 2018 by BeeryMiller

[+Schmitzi]

OmniFlop is doing that (but not sure at the moment if 3.5" is possible)

 

http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm#OmniFlop_Overview

 

Just search for "4A" on this page. (Note: Paolo Bagnaresi is also mentioned here)

 

From the page:

" 160.Read, write, and format TI-99/4A formats (90kB, 160kB, 180kB, 320kB, 360kB, 640kB, 720kB, 1440kB, 40-track, 80-track, single- and double-stepped). Note: High-density formats need DDAM hardware support and OmniFDC driver must be installed. "

[atrax27407]

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for the tips and suggestions. Taking everything into account, I have settled on what I think is a viable solution to the problem of backing up my library. Here is what I propose:

 

On the TI:

 

1) Run each disk through ARCHIVER (Vn 3.03) and save the result to my workspace on my HRD16 (2500 sectors)

 

2) After I have 6 or 7 disks archived, run them through PC-TRANSFER and add a TIFILES header to each saving them to a PC-formatted 3.5" disk ( a 720K disk will hold that many individual files).

 

3) Copy the files directly to my laptop using a USB 3'5" disk drive.

 

The files can be retrieved from the PC by reversing the process. The files transfer back to the TI flawlessly. PC-TRANSFER strips the TIFILES header and they can be re-constituted by de-ARCing the file once they are on the TI. The advantage is that no additional software needs be installed on the PC or new hardware purchased and the individual files are smaller than a comparable .dsk file would be on the PC.

 

The disadvantage is that the process adds the steps on the TI instead of a straight read of a TI-formatted disk on the PC. Comments anyone?

[Opry99er]

I don't know if this is what you're asking, but I'll list my process below.

 

 

My workflow is as follows:

 

Utilities:

 

TI-side: CFHDXS1

PC-side: HDX Server

 

Note: you do NOT need an HDX modified rs232 to use this method.

 

 

-Create a directory on my USB thumb drive called "DISK TRANSFERS"

 

-Create individual folders in that directory with the names of the disks I am going to transfer

 

-Open the HDX server on the PC and select the source folder to which I will be transferring

 

-Run CFHDXS1 on the TI, insert disk to be transferred.

 

-Select all flies on the disk and send them with HDX1. as the destination

 

-Rinse and repeat (selecting new folders with my directory on the PC)

 

 

 

I can basically transfer disks as fast as I can insert them.... I have a thumb drive with literally hundreds of disks on it, and it takes up no space.

 

Transferring back to the TI, just reverse the process. This skips the archiving/unarchiving step.

 

 

You don't have PC-formatted physical floppies with this method, but I can basically have every piece of TI software ever created on my 32GB thumb stick and I can put it in my pocket.

[+arcadeshopper]

dsk2pc on the ti with the same set up works for doing direct to dsk and direct from dsk

[atrax27407]

I have refined my process a bit. I found that I can export/import the archived disks directly with PC-TRANSFER by using the IF128 file module. It make a TIFILES header unnecessary.So, I archive the disk and save it to a 3.5" PC-formatted disk and then dump the disk contents (when I get it full) to the PC. The files can go anywhere on the PC (even a flash drive, Greg).