famicomaster2
Experienced Member
Hello. I am here today with an odd dilemma. A friend of the family has gifted me a few old disk drives and controllers - 3 of which are MFM/RLL - and requested that I recover data from them if possible.
Due to a recent move, I do not currently have access to my XT or AT and will not for some time. The oldest machine I brought with me is a Pentium laptop - Unfortunately not helpful here.
I lucked out and my (new) local thrift store had a Pentium II to spare, a bit of work to it later and it will now get to Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 desktop. Goody!
Here's the problem. Disable the primary IDE controller and insert controller card (In this case, a DTC 7287) along with a drive (Seagate ST-277R1). From a DOS floppy, the drive is accessible and data is visible! I was able to recover the documents I was looking for by copying them to the secondary IDE drive and then from there in Windows 2000 copying them to a flash disk. All is well, but I noticed something: The controller pops up in Windows 98SE!
This implies that somewhere Windows 9x still holds support for the ST-412 control interface. I would like to image the drive if possible, but I have found no good answers on what software to use to achieve this. It would be nice to have a full sector for sector backup somewhere for archival.
Even more convenient would be to totally ditch Windows 9x and go to 2000 so I can just put it right on my network partition, and possibly have choice of newer imaging software. However, the controller nor the disk appear in 2000. Strange!
So here is my question:
What is the best full-drive imaging software that will run under Windows 98 or 2000? The machine is a 300MHz Pentium II with 256MB of RAM.
Is there a way to get Windows 2000 to recognize an MFM/RLL disk or controller? I looked through the device list and didn't see anything that looked like one, so I "lied" and picked the generic IDE/ESDI device with the primary resources, which has the same address and ports as the DTC card. The driver installs successfully and Windows 2000 shows that it is loaded and started successfully on boot, but I cannot select manual disk geometry. In the driver options I am only given "Auto detect" or "None." The geometry is entered into the BIOS and the drive functions flawlessly under DOS and 98SE.
Is there another driver I should try? Is there a driver out there somewhere? This would be incredibly useful for backup of drives in the future and of devices I currently have if I could just get it to work.
It is also simply a matter of morbid curiosity as well, if I can get a hold of a Windows 2000 driver that works, who's to say I can't finaggle it into working with XP? I think a 5MB partition on an ST-506 in Windows XP would be really funny, and very interesting. I've got Pentium 4 boards with ISA in storage, I would LOVE to see this in action.
tl;dr MFM/RLL drivers for Win2k or at least full disk imaging software for 98
Due to a recent move, I do not currently have access to my XT or AT and will not for some time. The oldest machine I brought with me is a Pentium laptop - Unfortunately not helpful here.
I lucked out and my (new) local thrift store had a Pentium II to spare, a bit of work to it later and it will now get to Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 desktop. Goody!
Here's the problem. Disable the primary IDE controller and insert controller card (In this case, a DTC 7287) along with a drive (Seagate ST-277R1). From a DOS floppy, the drive is accessible and data is visible! I was able to recover the documents I was looking for by copying them to the secondary IDE drive and then from there in Windows 2000 copying them to a flash disk. All is well, but I noticed something: The controller pops up in Windows 98SE!
This implies that somewhere Windows 9x still holds support for the ST-412 control interface. I would like to image the drive if possible, but I have found no good answers on what software to use to achieve this. It would be nice to have a full sector for sector backup somewhere for archival.
Even more convenient would be to totally ditch Windows 9x and go to 2000 so I can just put it right on my network partition, and possibly have choice of newer imaging software. However, the controller nor the disk appear in 2000. Strange!
So here is my question:
What is the best full-drive imaging software that will run under Windows 98 or 2000? The machine is a 300MHz Pentium II with 256MB of RAM.
Is there a way to get Windows 2000 to recognize an MFM/RLL disk or controller? I looked through the device list and didn't see anything that looked like one, so I "lied" and picked the generic IDE/ESDI device with the primary resources, which has the same address and ports as the DTC card. The driver installs successfully and Windows 2000 shows that it is loaded and started successfully on boot, but I cannot select manual disk geometry. In the driver options I am only given "Auto detect" or "None." The geometry is entered into the BIOS and the drive functions flawlessly under DOS and 98SE.
Is there another driver I should try? Is there a driver out there somewhere? This would be incredibly useful for backup of drives in the future and of devices I currently have if I could just get it to work.
It is also simply a matter of morbid curiosity as well, if I can get a hold of a Windows 2000 driver that works, who's to say I can't finaggle it into working with XP? I think a 5MB partition on an ST-506 in Windows XP would be really funny, and very interesting. I've got Pentium 4 boards with ISA in storage, I would LOVE to see this in action.
tl;dr MFM/RLL drivers for Win2k or at least full disk imaging software for 98
