Write MS-DOS images to 1571 via ZoomFloppy?

[Laner]

I obtained a Sanyo MBC-555 PC a few months ago. It was a very early entry into the PC clone market, and isn't 100% compatible with IBM's offerings. Therefore it can't use your typical early PC-era disks that you might find on eBay. A boot disk came with it, but it appears to be corrupted.

 

I found a bunch of .IMG disk images for it online, and I'm trying to figure out how to write them to real 5.25" floppies.

 

I know the 1571 can read/write MS-DOS disks, and ZoomFloppy can at least transfer D64/G64/etc. images from PC to a floppy. Does anyone know if I can use this same setup to write MS-DOS images from the PC to the 1571?

[R.Cade]

No, you cannot. Not that it's impossible- it may or may not be. However, nobody has written the software (and ZF firmware) to do such a thing.

[Laner]

Bummer. But I assumed it was a long shot.

[carlsson]

If you happen to have an older PC that takes 5.25" drives and has one of the more flexible floppy drive controllers (FDC), you might be able to use software like Omnidisk, Omniflop, Transdisk (?) etc. Those to a certain extent can control the transfer rate and format on the drive, as long as you're still in FM or MFM land. For comparison, Commodore and Apple used different schemes of GCR encoding.

 

Probably you could use more modern hardware too, something like a Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro or whichever options still are supported (I believe CatWeasel is discontinued, and Disc Ferret might only have been a hobbyist project with limited support) and connect the 5.25" drive to a such hardware add-on. It will cost you a bit of money but if you pick a good solution you likely will be able to use it for multiple purposes.