Trying to read 800k mac floppies

[microsoft windows]

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?

[ch_123]

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

[JohnElliott]

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.)

[microsoft windows]

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.

[microsoft windows]

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?

[ch_123]

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

[JohnElliott]

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

The registered version of disk2fdi 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.

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

[karadoc]

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.