Re: Reading Apple2 floppies on a PC using Disk2FDI

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

"Tim Haynes" <timhaynes@no.spam.please.alumni.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in
message news:4116ea23$1_2@news.cybersurf.net...
> Great work, Oliver!  Anybody care to duplicate his success??
>
> Cheers
> Tim

Yes, I have been using Disk2FDI since last year.  It's a great program.  I
have archived several hundred 5.25" floppies.  It works as Oliver stated
but it can also be used from Windows 95, 98 or ME as well as long as you
are using the "two drive" mode.

I use the form:

disk2fdi /S b: mydisk.do

This way it automatically detects what type of disk you have including 13
sector (DOS 3.2.x) disks although I haven't found any emulator that
supports 13 sector disk images.

I now use the registered version, a fast parallel port and a simple 2 wire
cable and it is much faster and you can read 3.5" floppies as well.

Disk2FDI also can produce FDI images which have the potential to allow many
copy-protected disks to be archived.  Unfortunately, there are no Apple II
emulators or utilities that support the FDI format.

Charlie

>
> "Oliver Schmidt" <ol.sc@web.de> wrote in message
> news:cf56ib$b0j$1@online.de...
> > Hi,
> >
> > now and then somebody asks here about reading Apple floppies on a PC
> > for converting them to disk images usable with Apple2 emulators.
> >
> > Considered impossible for more than a decade this is in fact possible
> > with Disk2FDI available at http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi. Because
> > of the several scenarios and usecases described I found the Disk2FDI
> > docs a little confusing. Therefore I'd like to share my personal
> > experience with Disk2FDI:
> >
> > My original setup was quite common. A single 3,5" floppy drive and a
> > "modern" Windows on the hard disk completely formatted with NTFS. BTW:
> > The following should be identical for Linux users.
> >
> > 1. I got myself an old 5,25" 1,2 MB floppy drive from TEAC. The
> > Disk2FDI docs say that for our usecase any 5,25" drive will work.
> >
> > 2. I noticed that my floppy drive cable had only connectors for 3,5"
> > drives so I had to get one with at least one connector for a 5,25"
> > drive.
> >
> > 3. I installed the 5,25" drive and connected it as drive B: (in other
> > words "in the middle" of the cable) leaving the existing 3,5"
> > connected as drive A: (at the end of the cable).
> >
> > 4. I added the 5,25" 1.2MB drive as second floppy drive into the BIOS
> > and made sure that booting from a floppy disk is generally enabled.
> >
> > 5. I created a MS-DOS bootdisk. The Disk2FDI docs say that images for
> > DOS bootdisks that are available at http://www.bootdisk.com/ in case
> > you shouldn't have MS-DOS at hand anymore.
> >
> > 6. I added the disk2fdi.com program to the bootdisk and rebooted my PC
> > from that bootdisk.
> >
> > 7. I write-protected the Apple2 floppy disk to read and inserted it
> > into the 5,25" drive.
> >
> > 8. I entered
> >
> >   disk2fdi /SDO16 b: mydisk.do
> >
> > which successfully wrote a mydisk.do image to the 3,5" bootdisk. BTW:
> > This can be done for several images as a 1,44MB floppy disk has space
> > for many 140kB images.
> >
> > 9. I removed the 3,5" bootdisk and rebooted my PC from the hard disk
> > again.
> >
> > 10. I re-inserted the 3,5" bootdisk and finally copied the image(s) to
> > the hard disk.
> >
> > Finally I'd like to thank Vincent Joguin for this great piece of
> > software !
> >
> > Oliver
> >
>
>