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Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 12:36 am
by jivrt
Hi again.
Which would you say is the best way to copy old floppy disks to a PC to preserve them?

A simple wcopy flp1_ to flp2_ being flp2 a floppy disk image?
or is there another file transfer program that verifies bad sectors and tries to fix them?

I have read all the forum topics about this and Dwilin Jones back to ql and other useful guides.

I am using Qemulator, Windows / pc with floppy drive

Some disks cant be read but I can read Chess.
I also have West , Zkul, Graphiql and would like to preserve them as well

Regarding Chess , it only runs in 128 k memory or else it will prompt out of memory at line 120
And also it asks for the master cartridge in mdv2. How can I make it work? I do have the master cartridge but is a very old microdrive.

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 11:43 am
by Martin_Head
If you use WCOPY flp1_ to flp2_ You will loose the file dates, and it may miss some oddly named files.

A program I have used is EMT4WIN http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1081 It's a windows program that converts PC and QL floppies to a disk images. Just pick a standard image file format, So a 720K floppy will make a 720K image.

The only problem I had was with QL floppies that had funny formats, like 50 tracks instead of 80.

It also won't like floppies with bad sectors.

You can also make image files directly from a QL using the Direct Sector Access facilities of Trump/Gold cards.

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 4:00 pm
by jivrt
Martin_Head wrote:If you use WCOPY flp1_ to flp2_ You will loose the file dates, and it may miss some oddly named files.

A program I have used is EMT4WIN http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1081 It's a windows program that converts PC and QL floppies to a disk images. Just pick a standard image file format, So a 720K floppy will make a 720K image.

The only problem I had was with QL floppies that had funny formats, like 50 tracks instead of 80.

It also won't like floppies with bad sectors.

You can also make image files directly from a QL using the Direct Sector Access facilities of Trump/Gold cards.
Thank you very much! I 'm trying it.

It creates a image for Chess, but it doesn't like floppies with bad sectors.
The resulting image img can be opened by qemulator or should I build them self restorable(ardi)?

And do you know how to bypass the master cartridge copy safeguard?


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Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 10:19 am
by Martin_Head
jivrt wrote:The resulting image img can be opened by qemulator or should I build them self restorable(ardi)?
It's quite a while since I last used EMT4WIN, and I only ever used the normal image format. So I don't know much about the other formats of image files it can produce. I expect the other image file types may not be readable by QL emulators
And do you know how to bypass the master cartridge copy safeguard?
Not tried to do it on Psion Chess. There is a Psion Chess for Qemutator here http://terdina.net/ql/software.html I don't know if it's just a demo, or the full program.

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 8:55 pm
by Outsoft
Use SAMDISK of Simon Owen: we have recently implemented the QDOS file format for dumping protected and none QL floppies.

The QDOS is a DSK standard format compatible with Q-emuLator.

http://simonowen.com/samdisk/

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 9:14 pm
by jivrt
Thank you! And do you know how to bypass the protection tonplay chess. I have the original master microdrive. The same with West, Zkul and Graphiql


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Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 10:21 pm
by NormanDunbar
Many years ago, Digital Precision sent me a pile of microdrives to see if I could break the protection on them. Chess was not one of them.

Most were pretty simple though, you had to disassemble the code, find where it accessed mdv2, then NOP out whatever checks it did to prove the master was in mdv2. Some did the checks in many places. Some had deliberately bad sectors. Some had the worst spaghetti code imaginable. Some, like The Farmer, I never broke. (But that one came from Rich, if I remember correctly.)

So, if you need to break it, there's a lot of hard work required, I'm afraid.

Good luck.


Cheers,
Norm.

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 12:15 am
by jivrt
NormanDunbar wrote:Many years ago, Digital Precision sent me a pile of microdrives to see if I could break the protection on them. Chess was not one of them.

Most were pretty simple though, you had to disassemble the code, find where it accessed mdv2, then NOP out whatever checks it did to prove the master was in mdv2. Some did the checks in many places. Some had deliberately bad sectors. Some had the worst spaghetti code imaginable. Some, like The Farmer, I never broke. (But that one came from Rich, if I remember correctly.)

So, if you need to break it, there's a lot of hard work required, I'm afraid.

Good luck.


Cheers,
Norm.
Thanks again!
Well it isn’t that important. Just trying to bring back memories. I could just buy them again from RWAP, Rich
By the way, what a clever protection they had , better than the crackable games of today.


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Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 7:43 am
by RWAP
For the Talent titles (and any other titles I sell) - if you email me proof that you own the originals, I am happy to send you copies suitable for use with q-emulator (or to copy to disk) :D

There is no need to buy them again !

Re: Best way to preserve old floppy disks

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 1:37 pm
by jivrt
RWAP wrote:For the Talent titles (and any other titles I sell) - if you email me proof that you own the originals, I am happy to send you copies suitable for use with q-emulator (or to copy to disk) :D

There is no need to buy them again !
Ok! Thats great! I have the original mdvs and the sleeves. Also the manual for graphiql.
Would that be enough?
I also plan to buy old software, from you when my tetroid clone arrives!


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