Kryoflux

[JDW]

A very kind subscriber to my YouTube channel donated a Kryoflux.  It hasn't yet arrived, but I am now thinking about how best to use it to make archives of Mac 400K and 800K disks.  One thing I see in YouTube videos on the subject is that everybody is using some kind of PC floppy drive with it.  It seems those floppy drives have a very wide ribbon cable, which appears to be what the Kryoflux requires.  I assume this means it is totally impossible to connect a vintage Macintosh 400K or 800K drive to the Kryoflux?  I do have a more modern USB floppy drive, but I'm not sure if that would be compatible.

Another very weird thing is that the Mac OSX installer talks about a *.jar (JAVA) file that isn't actually installed:



Wherefore art thou, "kryoflux_ui.jar"?  I don't even know where to separately download that JAR.  Obviously, being a Mac user, I am more keen on using the GUI than Terminal commands.  Surely there must be at least one Kryoflux owner among us who would know?

Thank you!

 

[pcamen]

@JDW mine is still sitting in the box, yet to be used.  I bought it mainly to be able to write PC floppies for my MacCharlie to run.  I've always heard it is a bit of a learning curve to get to know how to use it, so perhaps that has kept me from running with it.  Please post any tips. 

As far as archiving Mac Floppies, now that the Applesauce does HD disks, that is my one stop shop for anything Apple in terms of disk archiving. 

 

[JDW]

@pcamen

Applesauce costs $285 for the version we would need to archive Mac disks, and honestly the only reason I am even investigating Kryoflux is because a kind Subscriber to my YouTube channel donated the Kryoflux unit (which is valued at about $100+shipping).  

Someone in the Kryoflux forums pointed me to a Patched JAR file that loads without error.  However, that still doesn't resolve the bigger problem of the 400K floppy drive cable being too small to connect to the Kryoflux hardware unit.  But here's the kicker...  The Kryoflux compatibility page says Apple 400K/800K drives are supported!  And the only way to get 400K onto a single sided 3.5" disk is to use Apple's proprietary variable speed drives, which are the same as what the Macintosh 128K and 512K use.  So I am confused here about what to do.

 

[sfiera]

I looked around a bit. Here’s a post from the Kyroflux forums. It claims that most floppy drives don’t work, but a particular Sony drive (the MPF920-1) does. There’s a MPF920 (no “-1”) on Mercari for ¥1700. It wouldn’t be surprising if Sony drives were best for the purpose… but another post there claims Sony drives (including the MPF920, also no “-1”) are no good with Kryoflux. A blog post tries out a bunch of drives and succeeds—only with the Sony ones.

In my searching, I didn’t find any definitive source of information.

 

[olePigeon]

I wish you best of luck.  Kyroflux doesn't have much of any Macintosh support.  From what I've read, those who have had success, also reported that the drives are hit and miss even amongst the same brads and model numbers.  That's why I went with an AppleSauce.  Although, I still might get a Kyroflux eventually anyway for my growing collection of DOS titles.

If you get the process down for the Kyroflux, it desperately needs instructions.

 

[JDW]

@olePigeon, based on the excellent links @sfiera provided, it would seem that only particular SONY floppy drives work, and then a lot depends on how the media was stored through the years.