Tokugawa Corporate Forums

Hello all, I would like to ask for generic instructions as how to dump old floppy disks, independent of platform.

Particularly which programs are the best to use and which OS (Win98?). I'm asking this because I have zero experience with the dumping process and I cannot think of a better place to ask this.

Thanks!

I have experience only of PC and Amiga disks, and I think the platform does make a difference, as does the type of floppy.

1. Amiga disks - best done on an Amiga, and quite simple.
2. PC disks 360k 5.25 inch. Nightmare. You need a 486 era machine and a genuine 360k drive, as newer floppy controllers do not work right with a 360k drive. Be prepared to clean heads after every second dump. DON'T use a 1.2mb drive on 360kb disks - not reliable.
3. PC disks 1.2mb 5.25 inch. Also best done on an older machine, head cleaning, etc.
4. PC disks 3.5inch. Some floppy drives ( 3.5inch drives are the most awful things ) to try to find one that reads your disks. Modern-ish machine is OK - maybe Win95/Win98. In general terms these drives always seem to be slightly out of alignment compared with others - usually your one is "out" compared to the drive that made the floppy you are trying to read! Always try the first read/access from DOS as Win can trash the file allocation table in the blink of an eye - if DOS reads the dir, proceed on Win, else try another drive. Frequent head cleaning if the media is old.
5. If you can access via Win, use Winimage. If not, try the DOS program TeleDisk, which makes .TD0 images which not many emulators can read, though MESS has some support.

Otherwise - look up a thing called a Catweasel controller:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual ... _Catweasel

Out of interest, here in South Africa, 5.25in floppies are called floppies, 3.5in are called "stiffies".

http://hackaday.com/2012/03/31/floppy-a ... iga-disks/

Not relevant but I'll leave this here.

Peter: many thanks! I'm putting together a pc just for dumping old 5.25" 40 track pc disks. Right now I'm selecting an appropiate floppy controller (WD37C85 ISA board or Prime2 ISA board) to use in place of the built-in one. Unfortunately I only have 1.2mb 5.25" drives, three of them. I hope my setup succeeds.

Ben: Whoa, nice artifact! Floppy heavy machinegun

I recommend this floppy controller for dumping old floppy disks:

http://www.kryoflux.com/

Infact the duplicator above uses this.

But it can't write disks, catweasel does.

If I'm not wrong, they added also the write support.

Do any of them work with FM Towns floppy disks?