Re: Which drive/controller/firmware to read old disks ?

["ict@ccess" <gids.rs@sasktel.net>]

On Sep 15, 2:05 am, Zero dB <n...@email.com> wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> This will be a cinch for most of you, but I am not that well-versed on
> the apple ii hardware since I was a child when i was introduced, and
> mostly played games (as I continue to do now)
>
> However.  A friend of mine sent me some disks that may have some very
> old, very valuable art projects that I want to access, but the disks
> don't seem to want to read in my duo-disk.
>
> He sent me a bunch of "scotch 744" diskettes, which i think are ss/sd,
> and some apple master dos 3.2 disks in a plastic sleeve.
>
> I'm assuming that I can't read these older disks with my duo disk due
> to both the controller firmware AND the drives being limited to 140K
> per disk.  I believe I need an older disk ii and controller with old
> firmware so that can read 113.75KB disks.
>
> Does this sound right ? 40 of 40 disks failed to be read. I tried to
> catalog in cii+ and get an io error. I forget the eror but can
> retrieve if needed.
>
> It's fairly important that I read these disks and be able to copy them
> to a slot 6 dos3.3 formatted disk.
>
> Am I on the mark with the old disk @ 113.75KB and the hardware needs
> to access it?
>
> THANKS!
> Jayson
>

Kind of.  What you are referring to as the 113.75 kb floppy is called
the 13 sector format of the earlier disks.  The DOS3.3 master wont
read a 13 sector disk directly and unless the disks you have were
preformatted to include the boot sectors and a "Hello" program to give
a directory of the disk, your disks will not be bootable.

What you need is a bootable master disk of DOS version 3.0 to 3.2.1.

First boot a normal DOS 3.3 disk and then do a catalog to list the
files.  Look for a program called BOOT13.  At the prompt, insert your
DOS 3.0 to 3.2.1 and boot into that.  Your data disks should now be
readable.

There were older 13 sector, 5.25 inch cards and drives that were
specifically for the 13 sector disks.  But the newer 16 sector card
and drives will also read a 13 sector disk with the right version of
DOS and a bootup program like BOOT13.

Rob