Can somebody point out my error please?
I have a usb floppy drive attached to my machine. If I insert a DOS floppy, the light comes on and Dolphin pops up to tell me the disc label. But I want to read some adfs formatted floppies and the thing isn't playing ball.
If I run cat /proc/partitions with the DOS floppy in, it tells me it's sdc but if try it with an adfs floppy the light comes on and goes off. If I then type mount -t adfs /dev/sdc /media/floppy it tells me that there is no medium found on /dev/sdc so what am I doing wrong?
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:50:44PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Can somebody point out my error please?
I have a usb floppy drive attached to my machine. If I insert a DOS floppy, the light comes on and Dolphin pops up to tell me the disc label. But I want to read some adfs formatted floppies and the thing isn't playing ball.
If I run cat /proc/partitions with the DOS floppy in, it tells me it's sdc but if try it with an adfs floppy the light comes on and goes off. If I then type mount -t adfs /dev/sdc /media/floppy it tells me that there is no medium found on /dev/sdc so what am I doing wrong?
Apologies in advance if I'm talking out of my bottom but...
I'm assuming by adfs, you mean the old apple floppy format. If I remember correctly, Apple's used a similar floppy controller to Amigas which spins the disc at varying speeds depending on the disc it's reading/writing. IBM-style floppy controllers (again, iirc) spin at a constant rate and are incapable of reading those more esoteric/sensible* floppy formats.
The above being the case, I share your sympathy as I dearly wanted to be able to stick my Amiga floppies into my PC and just rip all the content off into files. I ended up just getting an ethernet card for my Amiga :)
HTH HAND, Steve
* Delete as appropriate
On 25/06/10 13:53, Steve Engledow wrote:
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:50:44PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Can somebody point out my error please?
I have a usb floppy drive attached to my machine. If I insert a DOS floppy, the light comes on and Dolphin pops up to tell me the disc label. But I want to read some adfs formatted floppies and the thing isn't playing ball.
If I run cat /proc/partitions with the DOS floppy in, it tells me it's sdc but if try it with an adfs floppy the light comes on and goes off. If I then type mount -t adfs /dev/sdc /media/floppy it tells me that there is no medium found on /dev/sdc so what am I doing wrong?
Apologies in advance if I'm talking out of my bottom but...
I'm assuming by adfs, you mean the old apple floppy format. If I remember correctly, Apple's used a similar floppy controller to Amigas which spins the disc at varying speeds depending on the disc it's reading/writing. IBM-style floppy controllers (again, iirc) spin at a constant rate and are incapable of reading those more esoteric/sensible* floppy formats.
The above being the case, I share your sympathy as I dearly wanted to be able to stick my Amiga floppies into my PC and just rip all the content off into files. I ended up just getting an ethernet card for my Amiga :)
HTH HAND, Steve
- Delete as appropriate
The company name begins with 'A' but it's not Apple. It's an Acorn formatted floppy as was used on their Archimedes and Risc PC machines. I have a stack of these floppies and want to recover their contents and also a SCSI hard disc. I'm awaiting delivery of a SCSI cable from ebay so that I can hook up the drive to an old PC and have a crack at reading the contents of that too.
Hmm. <wonders if it would be easier to try reading the floppies in the old machine instead>
In case you wonder what I'm going to do with the contents of the floppies, here's the answer - http://b-em.bbcmicro.com/arculator/index.html and http://www.marutan.net/rpcemuspoon/
Sorry, should haev gone to list:
Chris,
I'd recommend:
OmniFlop (Windows) http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
or the bootable version of OmniDisk:
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniDisk
They should let you retrieve .adf disc images, provided the discs aren't copy protected and you don't have a machine with a problematic floppy controller.
Jason Watton, the author, is a very helpful chap, if you need support.
Peter.
** samwise samwise@bagshot-row.org [2010-06-25 14:33]:
Sorry, should haev gone to list:
Chris,
I'd recommend:
OmniFlop (Windows) http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
or the bootable version of OmniDisk:
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniDisk
They should let you retrieve .adf disc images, provided the discs aren't copy protected and you don't have a machine with a problematic floppy controller.
Jason Watton, the author, is a very helpful chap, if you need support.
** end quote [samwise]
That looks interesting, I've got a stack of disks of various formats I'd like to preserve. Most I've no idea what is on them, but it might be interesting when I get the chance to find out! I'll have to dig out my old 5.25" drive and hook it up, then start archiving the BBC Micro, Apple II and Tandy TRS-80 disks I've got, as well as my Amiga and Atari ones :) There's probably some other formats in there too, but I doubte I'll bother with the couple of 8" disks I've got! Hmm, the 3" ones may be another matter though ;)
On 25/06/10 14:32, samwise wrote:
I'd recommend:
OmniFlop (Windows)
Looks interesting.
However, on the overview page it says:
--- It runs under Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. For DOS and Windows 95 through to Windows Me, use OmniDisk instead. Under Linux, you've got a whole host of tools already (of course) more than capable! ---
So, what would those Linux tools be?
On 25 Jun 15:05, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 25/06/10 14:32, samwise wrote:
I'd recommend:
OmniFlop (Windows)
Looks interesting.
However, on the overview page it says:
It runs under Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. For DOS and Windows 95 through to Windows Me, use OmniDisk instead. Under Linux, you've got a whole host of tools already (of course) more than capable!
So, what would those Linux tools be?
Mostly, dd.
On 25/06/10 15:26, Brett Parker wrote:
So, what would those Linux tools be?
Mostly, dd.
I did think that, but presumably OmniFlop is doing more than just a simple image of the disk, otherwise why the list of supported disk types? I'd assumed that reading different disk types means talking to the disk controller directly and the commands required to image different disk types will be different?
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:50:44PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Can somebody point out my error please?
Searching the web suggests that you can't mount adfs formatted floppy disks in Linux due to weirdness of the floppy controller (similar to what Steve said about Amiga disks) there are a few solutions so you could try them where you pull the image of the floppy off the disk and then mount that. Of course, some of these pages might be quite old so no idea if they will work for you or not.
Adam
On 25/06/10 14:27, Adam Bower wrote:
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:50:44PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Can somebody point out my error please?
Searching the web suggests that you can't mount adfs formatted floppy disks in Linux due to weirdness of the floppy controller (similar to what Steve said about Amiga disks) there are a few solutions so you could try them where you pull the image of the floppy off the disk and then mount that. Of course, some of these pages might be quite old so no idea if they will work for you or not.
Adam
The problem so far is that the programs, like OmniFlop, don't work with USB drives. So I've now dragged the old machine onto the desk beside me and have just fired it up to see if I can persuade that to read the various floppies.
Thanks to everybody for their help. I'll report back.
On 25/06/10 15:05, Chris Walker wrote:
On 25/06/10 14:27, Adam Bower wrote:
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:50:44PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Can somebody point out my error please?
Searching the web suggests that you can't mount adfs formatted floppy disks in Linux due to weirdness of the floppy controller (similar to what Steve said about Amiga disks) there are a few solutions so you could try them where you pull the image of the floppy off the disk and then mount that. Of course, some of these pages might be quite old so no idea if they will work for you or not.
Adam
The problem so far is that the programs, like OmniFlop, don't work with USB drives. So I've now dragged the old machine onto the desk beside me and have just fired it up to see if I can persuade that to read the various floppies.
Thanks to everybody for their help. I'll report back.
Got it working!
That was on my old P4 machine and which has an inbuilt floppy drive.
It runs Debian to which I installed fdutils.
I could then enter the setfdprm commands for the appropriate sized discs I want to read.
As I imagined, when running dd to generate files, it's having problems with some of the discs. But I've recovered a couple so far with another couple of failures. But I've managed to generate an 800k disc file of some ancestry pictures which are important as I'm doing my family tree at the moment.
I found some relevant information on www.adsb.co.uk/bbc/linux
Hopefully those people with Amigas etc will have as much if not more luck with their attempts at reading discs.
A bit late on this one...
When this conversation came up, I forwarded the conversation to Andy Taylor (andytuk@gmail.com), of www.retrocomputers.eu, and a member of the Peterborough LUG.
He indicated that he was more than willing to assist with the problem of getting data of Acorn (or was it Amiga?, I forget) floppies and has some experience of such things. Obviously the initial query has been resolved but I am sure his offer to help with anything relating to old kit stands (and he's always after donations of obsolete kit of historical value).
Anyway, I asked him whether he was OK for me to post his details here, my message hit his spam folder, and he's only just seen it to give me the OK.
I've CC'd Andy on this but note that he is not currently an ALUG subscriber so won't see replies unless he is CC'd (and if he replies they won't reach the list unless he thinks to subscribe when he reads this).
Hi,
On 2 July 2010 10:50, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
He indicated that he was more than willing to assist with the problem of getting data of Acorn (or was it Amiga?, I forget) floppies and has some experience of such things. Obviously the initial query has been resolved but
You've just reminded me of the Star Fighter 3000 game for the Acorn (Archimedes 4000 machines?).
We had tournaments during lunch times at secondary school, with about 20 floppies being supplied by some older students. Good times.
Just recently, when I was in the Manchester area helping my parents move house, I saw they still have a C64 and the drive! Didn't have time to fire it up, unfortunately.
Srdjan
On 02/07/10 12:42, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Just recently, when I was in the Manchester area helping my parents move house, I saw they still have a C64 and the drive! Didn't have time to fire it up, unfortunately.
Heh you just reminded me of a game an old school programmer I used to work with had written for the C64 back in the day.
It was only available in disk version so struggling for resources on the C64 they offloaded some tasks to the 6502 that was hidden inside the 1541 disk drive.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the game but I always wondered how much of a challenge it provided to the C64 emulator scene
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Adam Bower -
Brett Parker -
Chris Walker -
Mark Rogers -
Paul Tansom -
samwise -
Srdjan Todorovic -
Steve Engledow -
Wayne Stallwood