Making 400K & 800K Disk Images on A Modern Computer

[Mac128]

Does anybody have any experience using Disk2FDI or Catweasel?

Both products claim they can make disk images from a 400K & 800K GCR floppy, Catweasel claims to even be able to do it with a standard 1.44MB MFM HD drive. An E-Maculation thread suggests Disk2FDI needs the real deal.

Of interest to me is the Disk2FDI which does not require any special hardware. It requires A Pentium® processor or better and A free parallel port, preferably from a dedicated PCI parallel port card. Would this run under an Intel Mac? If so, how would one get a Parallel port onto the Mac? A Keyspan adapter?

However, the Catweasel might work on a PowerMac/Mac Pro with a PCI card slot. But that one seems like a lot more effort than just buying a Mac Plus.

 

[Gorgonops]

Of interest to me is the Disk2FDI which does not require any special hardware. It requires A Pentium® processor or better and A free parallel port, preferably from a dedicated PCI parallel port card. Would this run under an Intel Mac? If so, how would one get a Parallel port onto the Mac? A Keyspan adapter?

Disk2FDI needs a *real* parallel port, and runs under *DOS*. A USB parallel port won't work because it needs to twiddle the actual hardware bits via DMA, and it has to run under bare-metal DOS because timing is absolutely critical.

The only possible way I could see to run this on current Apple hardware would be if you could get a PCI-E parallel port card (I Googled, they do make such things... which surprised the heck out of me) working in a Mac Pro desktop. You'd be much better off digging a Pentium computer out of your neighbor's garbage can and using that.