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Finally A Way To Read 400K/800K Disks Without An Old Mac
- Thread starter Mac128
- Start date
I finally just got all the pieces together and set up my Kryoflux board and software. It seems to be ready for action, but the box of drives I catalogued has not turned out so well... Many of these were field stripped from some of the many PCs which sprouted on the curb every week while I was living in the city, and have been dwelling in a tote bin for years. About 90% of them have turned out to be bad, including a few high-end ones I had high hopes for. And of the remaining few, none were good enough for archival purposes. By the weekend I will need to remove some drives from a few of my own better-kept boxen to try.
I am aiming to successfully archive and use a disk image by the end of this coming weekend.
I am aiming to successfully archive and use a disk image by the end of this coming weekend.
Folks, a word of advice about floppies and drives. Don't throw away those old floppies before you are 100% sure the problem is NOT in the drive mechanism. I did this some years ago and regretted it later. I was using the internal floppy drive of my SE/30 to check my stock of old disks, some of which I had around since 1984. Most of them gave me read errors, but some worked fine. I therefore assumed that the disks were bad, so I with much pain and suffering threw them out. Over the coming weeks, I found that fewer and fewer of my floppies worked in my SE/30, even the floppies that once worked fine before. After much testing I found that it was my floppy drive heads that were the culprit. After resolving that problem, I had no read/write errors at all. So it probably was the case that I threw out many disks that were in fact just fine.
I suggest a head cleaning before you do anything. And keep in mind that if you have a bad or iffy head, a head cleaning won't solve that. Make sure your floppy drive itself is in optimal shape before you consider any disk "bad."
I suggest a head cleaning before you do anything. And keep in mind that if you have a bad or iffy head, a head cleaning won't solve that. Make sure your floppy drive itself is in optimal shape before you consider any disk "bad."
My Kyroflux controller arrived yesterday (31/05/2011). I decided to get a known working FDD supplied with it, as the half dozen drives I've already got have been having problems with reading the 1.44 MS-DOS FDs. So, as soon as time permits, I'll start archiving all my A2 and Mac 3.5" floppies. I don't mind putting down the cash as a small investment that saves my machines from any undue wear and tear, and being able to archive the images directly on my QS2002.
Having all my floppies imaged, will allow me to create virtual instances of each real machine, it's software, and then only power up the real deal when I need the full retro fix.
Having all my floppies imaged, will allow me to create virtual instances of each real machine, it's software, and then only power up the real deal when I need the full retro fix.
You got your controller around June 1st 2011. It's now Dec. 22, 2011. You've had almost 7 months to tinker and test.
What has been your experience in working with 400k and 800k Mac disks, both with and without copy protection?
And...
Will this Kyroflux kit truly allow us to image our 400k and 800k and 1.4MB floppies (even with copy protection) via USB on our modern Macs running OS X 10.7 Lion?
If I were in the states, I'd ask you to temporarily ship it to me so I could put my other projects aside and test it for you! 
But since I am in Japan, two-way shipping would be cost prohibitive to do it.
So all I can say at this point is, please make time! Christmas holidays are coming up. Perhaps you could give a couple 400k and 800k disks a check then?
But since I am in Japan, two-way shipping would be cost prohibitive to do it.So all I can say at this point is, please make time! Christmas holidays are coming up. Perhaps you could give a couple 400k and 800k disks a check then?
Oooh! Oooh! I'm in Sydney! I can /totally/ do this.
Except I don't have any 800K disks.
Except I don't have any 800K disks.
Blast!! (and other expletives) Went to get this running over the weekend but the software won't run under 10.5.8, wrong version of JVM. Installed to XP running in VPC7, but won't communicate on the USB pass through connection. Looks like Ive got to get a x86 Mac into the work room.
closely followed by myself
Finally got the KryoFlux hooked up to my "new" Mac Mini Server, and all is good, works fine.
Pop on over to http://retromaccast.ning.com/profiles/blogs/archiving-my-floopy-disks for a brief story with pictures.
Sorry it took so long guys.
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