Reading old floppies under linux

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Lamar Owen wrote:
> On Friday 30 November 2007, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>> Then again, I should probably archive all
>> the 5-1/4" floppies while I still have a drive that reads them. I
>> have so 5-1/4" 96tpi double-density drives and floppies. I guess I
>> could teach Linux to read the floppies in a 5-1/4" high-density
>> drive. (Data rate of a 360K floppy but the track spacing of a 1.2M
>> floppy - the same format as a 720k 3-1/2" floppy.)
> 
> One word: CatWeasel.  Programs are available for Linux to read and write 
> virtually any format floppy with a PC.  Even Apple ][, Commodore, TRS-80, 
> PDP-11 (RX02 even if you have an eight-inch drive, RX50 for the 5.25), even 
> Mac formatted 3.5 inch floppies can be read and/or written.  With xtrs and a 
> catweasel your Fedora 8 box can be the fastest TRS-80 ever made.... (yes, I 
> still occasionally fire up xtrs to remember just how good modern OS's like F8 
> are compared to the old TRSDOS I started with many years ago.)
> 
> You want the MK4 card, which isn't too hard to find.  If you wanted an MK3, 
> well, I have one that I'm looking to seel now that I have an MK4... :-). See 
> http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=206&osCsid=4749689b5aa2256c81e7b077ee67bc5d 
> for an order page from amigakit for the MK4.  The card is $123.41US.  If you 
> have lots of old floppies to archive, this is the card to have.
> 
> The old 96TPI 5.25 inch double-density drives were pretty common on TRS-80's, 
> too, in the enthusiast markets at least.  80 tracks and double-sided; 
> aka 'quad density'.
It is an interesting card, but it is not worth the investment for
what I need to do. It isn't hard to make Linux read the drive. I
believe I can teach cpmtools about the formats I am using. I mainly
use one standard one, and one I created for backups that does not
have a system track. The disks are double sided, double density,
96tpi. The track layout is the same as a 720k 3-1/2" disk.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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