Re: Archiving Apple ][e discs

["Charlie" <charlied@NOSPAMbboard.com>]

"neodem" <nospam_neodem@fast.net> wrote in message
s4ge60hjdt6911bverlcqevumv5h66l7jn@4ax.com">news:s4ge60hjdt6911bverlcqevumv5h66l7jn@4ax.com...
> I have about 400 Floppies from high school that have a ton of games
> and stuff on them. Since I graduated in 1987, we're coming up on 20
> years and I hear that floppies tend to loose data after 15 years. So,
> I want to archive them all to images on CD's.. and maybe save a few to
> play on an apple 2 emulater on my PC.
>
> I still have my ][e and my floppy duodisk and I'm pretty sure they
> work. What I want to know is this, is there a way to connect the apple
> to the pc so I can move the data and create the images. I know I can
> use a null modem cable, but that seems like a huge amount of time and
> work to move all 400 disks over.
>
> I apologize for asking this question since I'm sure its covered
> somewhere, but I've read the faq documents and they don't seem to
> cover my question in any detail.

The FAQs are not complete in this regard.  There is a way for some PCs to
read Apple II DOS 3.3 and ProDOS 5.25" floppies.

By "some PCs" I mean that the PC must have two floppy drives (only one has
to be a 5.25" drive) and it must be running MS-DOS or Windows 95, 98 or ME
(It won't work with NT, 2000 and XP).

You also need a program called "disk2fdi".  A trial version and information
can be found at:

http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi

The program reads the Apple floppy and creates a disk image (.do) on the
PC.  These images will work on most emulators.

I have archived at least 150 Apple floppies this way.  The amount of time
it takes for one floppy varies but it is usually one to two minutes, so it
is still going to be a lot of time for 400 floppies.

There are some things it can't do:

It can't read the back side of the floppies.
It won't read most copy-protected disks.
It can't write to Apple II floppies.

Charlie