On 03/16/2012 04:20 PM, Dave Dunfield wrote:
On another
mailing list that I am on, someone was expressing the
desire to retrieve data off some old BBC Micro floppies to see if it
would be possible to get some of the software running on a Raspberry
Pi. They do not own any machine with a floppy interface.
My BBC's don't have drives, and I don't have any software disks - so I
don't have a way to test this ... but ...
According to the all-knowing google, the BBC disk system used an
Intel 8271 and later an WD 177x controller - the 8271 does IBM 3740,
and the WD is certainly capable of it (so hopefully they kept the
format the same).
So it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that these disks
could be read with ImageDisk
They can, assuming a PC with an FM-capable controller; I did hundreds[1]
that way. The only minor detail was that most BBC floppies are treated as
two separate filesystems, so the single comment section in the Imagedisk
file can get a bit unwieldy.
[1] and subsequently found that my backup that I have in the US was hosed
(the IMD files themselves have large chunks missing) - so the only good
(hopefully! ;-) copies are 4000 miles away in storage. Happy to share when
they do eventually make it over here with me, though.
I've serial-linked floppy data (and hard disk images, which takes hours)
from BBC machines before too - but from Liam's post
it sounds as though the
person he's referring to doesn't have a BBC with a
floppy drive, let alone
a more modern PC equipped with such.
cheers
Jules