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Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

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Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#61

Post by wolvoleo »

amiga386 wrote: post #58
bartread wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, wait, what? It can? I did not know that. Back in the day I had an A500, and only bought the 1200 decades later. Had no idea it would accept HD floppies. TIL. Thank you!

It can't. The GP is mistaken. The stock A1200 floppy drive cannot read/write HD disks, though you can format most HD disks as DD and physically use them as DD (depending on the brand of floppy disk; back in the late 1990s I used to buy HD floppies because they were the only ones I could easily get, and they were cheaply made and weren't all that reliable on the Amiga, but became more reliable when formatted as HD in…

Any HD disk could be formatted as DD anyway. And on an Amiga you had to reformat every disk anyway because they used a different format.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#62

Post by wing-_-nuts »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #28

As a kid back then, floppies were expensive if you were using your pocket money or hard earned side hustle stash. Floppies were used, abused and reused until that dreadful bad sector. Even after the bad sector if you knew its location. But you knew the floppy time was up. Kids today will newer know the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies. The sound, the smell, the texture, the stickers, the formattin…

>Kids today will newer know the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies.

Even as an elder millennial most of the floppies I used back then were formatted aol install disks. I don't recall ever buying floppies, but maybe my father did

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#63

Post by wolvoleo »

Frieren wrote: post #27

> Not all red or unreadable sectors necessarily indicate failure. Many copy-protected disks include intentionally malformed sectors that cannot be read by standard logic. How they know? ;)

In that case it's usually not really needed to recover the floppy anyway. Copy protect means off the shelf software that you can probably still find on archive.org or anandonware sites.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#65

Post by 986aignan »

AkBKukU wrote: post #44

I do a lot of floppy imaging and some of my work on it has previously be discussed here[1]. I do not understand where they got the idea of "there are a number of disks that the Greaseweazle struggles to capture, namely the Apple formatted disks. If you have these disks in your collection, you may need to use an Applesauce controller." The Applesauce is a macOS exclusive tool that has a contingent of dedicated users.…

There's an issue on the FluxEngine git repo that may be related to this: https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/75

At the end of the thread, David Given reports that some PC floppy drives drop pulses when trying to read 800k Mac disks: https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/75#issuecomm...

So the Cambridge page might be saying "use an Applesauce controller" as a sort of shorthand for "use a drive from an actual Apple computer".

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#66

Post by AkBKukU »

986aignan wrote: post #65
AkBKukU wrote: post #44

I do a lot of floppy imaging and some of my work on it has previously be discussed here[1]. I do not understand where they got the idea of "there are a number of disks that the Greaseweazle struggles to capture, namely the Apple formatted disks. If you have these disks in your collection, you may need to use an Applesauce controller." The Applesauce is a macOS exclusive tool that has a contingent of dedicated users.…

There's an issue on the FluxEngine git repo that may be related to this: https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/75 At the end of the thread, David Given reports that some PC floppy drives drop pulses when trying to read 800k Mac disks: https://github.com/davidgiven/fluxengine/issues/75#issuecomm... So the Cambridge page might be saying "use an Applesauce controller" as a sort of shorthand for "use a drive fr…

I received a response stating something similar on the git repo. It is still incorrect to blame the controller, and I suggested instead to provide some compatible drive models to use instead like they already do in the more generic sections of the article. It should even be possible to to use the Mac drives with the Greaseweazle with an adapter because the 800k drives from the Apple computers are just Sony drives with an optional eject motor installed.

Unlike the Apple II they do not have a custom Apple PCB. It's possible Apple requested some tweaks when ordering from Sony but I don't think they are all that special. So it should be entirely possible to read the disks with other drives. Based on the information in the page you linked stating any 720k drive is compatible, I suspect the higher read rate may be a vestigial feature that Sony over spec'ed during the introduction and standardization of the 3.5in disk.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#69

Post by felooboolooomba »

al_borland wrote: post #57
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc like that. But, too little too late for too much money. But conceptually, haptically, optically...phenomenally!

I was a big MiniDisc fan. They were like digital cassette tapes. I could record from the radio, trim out the DJ, re-order the tracks, and give them titles. Looking back, it was all a bit tedious to do on the player/recorder itself, but paired with modern software and a reader for the PC, I'm sure it would be outstanding.

I was a fan until I learned that I couldn't copy the audio I recorded, as an audio file from it. Sony intentionally prevented you from doing to to "prevent potential copyright infringement".

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#70

Post by al_borland »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #69
al_borland wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a big MiniDisc fan. They were like digital cassette tapes. I could record from the radio, trim out the DJ, re-order the tracks, and give them titles. Looking back, it was all a bit tedious to do on the player/recorder itself, but paired with modern software and a reader for the PC, I'm sure it would be outstanding.

I was a fan until I learned that I couldn't copy the audio I recorded, as an audio file from it. Sony intentionally prevented you from doing to to "prevent potential copyright infringement".

They had TOSLINK support. So it doesn't seem like they'd be stopping anything, they'd just make it slow.
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