greaseweazle

3.5" Floppies are either DD or HD. (there's more but let's keep it simple and practical) A DD drive reads and writes DD floppies better than an HD one, but does not read/write HD floppies at all. There's a hole in the floppy for write protection (hole covered = write enabled), and there's another hole on the opposite side to signal the floppy is HD. If it's missing, it is DD. To recover a floppy, a USB drive is about the worst option, as they only expose a decoded floppy, and not the raw data, besides other annoyances. You'll want a period correct HD FDD, or DD if your floppy is DD and your HD drive is having trouble with it, alongside GreaseWeazle[0]. As for that old 486, you'll want to open the case ASAP and remove the motherboard's CMOS battery, before it destroys the whole thing. Capacitors aren't anywhere near a concern; most likely

GreaseWeazle[0] is where it's at now. KryoFlux was all we had before, but GW has overtaken it, and is open source proper. 0. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

The best (and most flexible) way to get data of old floppies is https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle which reads the data at a raw magnetic level using a standard floppy drive and a custom open source circuit board which replaces the host controller. However, if you are specifically dealing with PC floppies, it is potentially overkill (but it might still be the easiest way to hook up a 5.25" floppy drive to a modern computer). 5.25" drives may also need a separate power supply in addition to the greaseweazle, for 3.5" drives the GW has enough power to power the drive directly though.

A lot of floppy-based games have on-disk copy protection patterns that take advantage of undocumented behavior of disk drives at the time. So much so that tools like Greaseweazle [0] are necessary to compose full magnetic flux maps of archived floppies. Another thing is that these games are often made to run on a wide variety of graphics and sound hardware, and effectively have drivers compiled into them. [0] https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

Indeed, some create master disk images with forensic tools, and physical drives: https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle Then use clean disk images on USB floppy emulators for old equipment: https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy It is rare to need these tools, but for some folks it is important. =3

Project time/resource constraints not withstanding, wonder how this compares to other c-64 os alternatives.[0] ?? future options ?? : Unix bootable from a cassette tape drive? :-) ?? c-64 unix server with ports to hook up one or more c-64's via CaTer (Cartridge Terminal) -- perhaps best done via tcp-ip 'ports'. ?? fuse[1] for c-64 to be able to 'read' other floppies / c-64 unix swap space over tcp-ip.?? ?? "modern" 5.25" for c-64 via c-64 variant of greaseweazle[2] ?? ----- [0] "The Many Operating Systems of the Commodore 64" : https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-many-operating-systems-of... [1] c64-fuse (perhaps over c-64 tcp-ip) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace [2] greaseweazle : https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

I'd suggest grabbing a greaseweazle[0] ahead of that. 0. github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/

Archival Floppy Disk Preservation and Use - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxsRpMdmlGo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39495973 - February 2024 (23 comments) https://wiki.techtangents.net/wiki/Floppy_Disk_Imaging https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle https://kryoflux.com/

Look into GreaseWeazle[0]. Data can probably still be read. Especially if the floppies are DD. Don't wait for it to become unreadable. Backup now rather than later. 0. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/

The easiest solution is get a late model vintage mac that still has a floppy drive. the late model drives can read pretty much all mac floppies. the machine will be able to image the disk and copy it to usb(pci usb card) or over a network. Or you can get something like a Greaseweazle[1] and go that route if you want to do more advanced extraction. [1] https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

Also https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

Appreciate how the article documents the physical side of floppy interface and how a track is selected and read. Then there's the (several) formats of tracks and sectors, which are left out of scope. Mature open-source alternatives include GreaseWeazle[0] and FluxEngine[1]. They are also cheap and effective, based on off-the-shelf parts. 0. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki 1. https://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html

I'm not aware of any direct copier, most disk duplicators that were sold to regular people were just a bunch of floppy drives with regular disk copy software. These days, there is the delightfully named Greaseweazle (https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle) and similar devices to _read_ disks at a magnetic level, but I'm not sure if there is something to _write_ disks. I don't see any reason why such a thing couldn't exist, I'm just not aware of it. Tech Tangent has a good in-depth video about imaging disks for archival purposes if interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxsRpMdmlGo