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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: microsoft windows on Fri, 18 February 2011, 15:49:53

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 18 February 2011, 15:49:53

I've been  trying  to  get  computers to  read 800k floppy disks  written  on my Mac  SE.  I  hooked up a   USB floppy drive to  a Mac  and put  the  disks  in, but  I  still can't get it to  read them.  Do  you  all  know of any  programs I  can use to  read  these disks?

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 18 February 2011, 15:56:49

I'm suspecting the drive itself may not be able to read them.

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: JohnElliott on Fri, 18 February 2011, 16:00:58

Mac internal floppy drives were variable-speed. You'd need a pre-iMac Mac with an internal floppy drive to read the discs. It ought be sufficient to copy the files onto a 1.4Mb floppy; those weren't recorded at variable speed and the USB drive should be able to cope.

(OK, you could probably get a raw dump of magnetic flux on a PC with a Catweasel or a Kryoflux or other specialised hardware, but then you've got to extract the data.)

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 18 February 2011, 16:01:16

I've  tried  different floppy drives. The disks worked fine in  the  Mac SE  but the USB  floppy drives I hooked up  to  newer  Macs only  read 1.44MB disks,  not  the  800k  ones.

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 18 February 2011, 16:01:59

Quote from: JohnElliott;297407

Mac internal floppy drives were variable-speed. You'd need a pre-iMac Mac with an internal floppy drive to read the discs. It ought be sufficient to copy the files onto a 1.4Mb floppy; those weren't recorded at variable speed and the USB drive should be able to cope.

(OK, you could probably get a raw dump of magnetic flux on a PC with a Catweasel or a Kryoflux or other specialised hardware, but then you've got to extract the data.)

I'll  have to  look around for  some  old  pre-iMac Macintoshes.  They're getting harder to find  these days.


Is there any Windows program I  can  use to read  these 800k disks?

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 18 February 2011, 16:07:40

Read it onto your Mac, and then use either the serial or parallel port to transfer to a PC.

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: JohnElliott on Fri, 18 February 2011, 16:11:40

Quote from: microsoft windows;297410

Is there any Windows program I  can  use to read  these 800k disks?

The registered version of disk2fdi (http://disk2fdi.joguin.com/featreq.html) claims to be able to read Apple 800k floppies -- what you get is disc images suitable for a Mac emulator. It does require you to make or obtain a special cable (http://disk2fdi.joguin.com/D2FCABLE.htm).

ETA: Though disk2fdi is a DOS program, not a Windows one.

Title: Trying to read 800k mac floppies
Post by: karadoc on Sun, 20 February 2011, 03:22:54

Here is a discussion of reading Mac 800K floppies with KryoFlux:
http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15294&p=146012#p146012

It produces image files that can be used in emulators, with screenshots shown in that post.