marmotking
Experienced Member
I have a pile of 8" floppy disks, which I'd like to image and archive. I know that some are for a PDP-11/23 RX02 drive and some are for the TRS-80 Model II. Still others are for a Heathkit H11 and H27 drive. What I've done is obtained an 8" converter from dbit.com so that I can plug an 8" drive into my Catweasel MK4, which can be used to image the disks. There's a utility written by Tim Mann (see www.tim-mann.org/catweasel.html for cw2dmk.exe) which can read all of these formats, I believe.
So, here's the problem. I managed to make a good boot floppy from a DMK that's also on his site for a Model II. But, I can't seem to do it anymore after that first one. I write the image using dmk2cw.exe. It appears to go correctly. Then I try to read it back using cw2dmk.exe. The problem is, that when it hits about track 60, I start getting all sorts of bad sector reads. The first few read back sucessfully with lots of retries, but the rest just give lots of errors.
Now, I admit to not knowing anything about 8" drives and media. I've tried several drives (all Tandon tm-848 drives), which I believe to be double sided double density. I'm using floppy disks labeled, soft sector, single head, single side, single density, 26 sectors/128 bytes. It's got an index hole almost directly over the center ring, but ever so slightly to the right.
I've tried multiple power supplies for the external drive. I've tried multiple media. I can't seem to make an image that will read back properly. I did manage this once, in that I made a disk and was able to boot a TRS-80 Model II from it. (see LS-DOS image on Tim Mann's site).
Any advise? I've got a pile of borrowed disks with a nurvous owner, but would like to image these. Time's running out for me to get this all working. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Please ask me questions...
So, here's the problem. I managed to make a good boot floppy from a DMK that's also on his site for a Model II. But, I can't seem to do it anymore after that first one. I write the image using dmk2cw.exe. It appears to go correctly. Then I try to read it back using cw2dmk.exe. The problem is, that when it hits about track 60, I start getting all sorts of bad sector reads. The first few read back sucessfully with lots of retries, but the rest just give lots of errors.
Now, I admit to not knowing anything about 8" drives and media. I've tried several drives (all Tandon tm-848 drives), which I believe to be double sided double density. I'm using floppy disks labeled, soft sector, single head, single side, single density, 26 sectors/128 bytes. It's got an index hole almost directly over the center ring, but ever so slightly to the right.
I've tried multiple power supplies for the external drive. I've tried multiple media. I can't seem to make an image that will read back properly. I did manage this once, in that I made a disk and was able to boot a TRS-80 Model II from it. (see LS-DOS image on Tim Mann's site).
Any advise? I've got a pile of borrowed disks with a nurvous owner, but would like to image these. Time's running out for me to get this all working. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Please ask me questions...