Reading various format 5.25" floppies on a PC

Always start by being clear about whether you want to duplicate a diskette of the other ("alien") format read/write an image of the alien diskette read/write files from the alien diskette Use files from one program in another program Teledisk may be what you want (No longer available?). But it will NOT read Amiga, Apple, Northstar, single density, 128 byte sectors, etc. ON A PC, using the PC hardware, a PC CAN NOT READ ANYTHING other than "Western Digital" style MFM sectors on a PC, using PC hardware, disunirregardless of what software you try. But,... if you are willing to CHANGE the PC hardware AND write software to accompany the changed hardware,... then anything is possible. IFF you write the CD on the Amiga. The PC hardware can not read Amiga diskettes, which are MFM, but do NOT have the type of sector headers that the PC hardware needs.. That, of course, is not strictly true. There was one fellow who claimed that by interrupting it in mid read, that the PC could be tricked into reading Amiga! But AFAIK, he never got it to work reliably. Kinda like when Gallagher makes French fries using his sledge-o-matic - "I swear, you gotta hit that sucker just right." Yes. The PC hardware CAN NOT handle GCR. The PC hardware can ONLY handle MFM sectors with "Western Digital Style" sector headers. File content is irrelevant! Files is files. All that you are after is the right sequence of bytes. IT DOESN'T MATTER what the content is of the file. OTOH, if you want to move a file from one disk format to another, then you need software that not only reads the sectors/tracks of the "alien" diskette, but also implements enough of its file system to be able to parse the directory and understand it well enough to find the right sectors for the file that you want. That will give you an exact byte for byte copy of the file. The CONTENT of the file is another problem. Text files are no problem. But, many versions of BASIC "tokenize" the program for storage (replace every "keyword" with an abbreviation), and the tokens are not even the same from one version to another. But, as you said, you can override that and save it as text. For example, if you want to move a program from MICROS~1 BASIC version 4.51 on a CP/M machine to MICROS~1 BASIC version 5.0 on the SAME machine, you need to load the 0program into 4.51, save it as text, and load THAT into the new one. If you DO succeed in getting a VisiCalc spreadsheet from an Apple disk onto a PC disk, it will load just fine into the IBM PC version of VisiCalc. But do you think that the current version of EXCESS^H^HEL will handle it? If you copy a Wordstar file from a CP/M diskette to a PC, it will load into the PC version of Wordstar; but will the _current_ version of MICROS~1 WEIRD read files from the PC version of Wordstar? "I can build a radio that receives broadcasts from France. It will get all of the sounds EXACTLY right. But it doesn't TRANSLATE!" There have been some programs for altering the content of a file for transferring documents from one brand of word processor to another. There have been some programs for transferring files from various MFM diskettes to and from PC, including: 22DISK Flagstaff (No longer available) Hypercross (TRS-80 only) (No longer available) Media Master (No longer available) Oswego Systems (HP only) (No longer available) Uniform (No longer available) XenoCopy-PC (Available only by personally contacting the author) Each handles a fixed finite group of formats. Most have provision for adding in additional formats yourself, but almost nobody ever succeeds in doing so, and after fielding too many "which numbers do I put in to make my PC read Apple diskettes" the authors of the programs stop providing tech support and HIDE that feature (in XenoCopy, try holding down Alt and/or Ctrl when pressing the function keys, try format #0, etc.) The Amiga has significantly more versatile hardware than the PC. Central Coast Software made some stuff running on the Amiga for handling a lot of formats (No longer available) On the PC, it is possible to CHANGE the hardware into something more capable, usually by installing another circuit board between the disk controller and the floppy drive. Apple Turnover (changed to "Turnover" at Apple's "request") (comes with software for Apple ][ DOS, PRODOS, Apple ][ CP/M, Apple ][ Pascal, etc) (No longer available) Central Point Option Board (get the "Deluxe") (has software for Mac 400K, 800K) (No longer available) Catweasel (there has been MUCH confusion between what it "CAN DO" (when somebody writes software) v what it "WILL DO")) Tim Mann is the real expert on it, has written great stuff for it, and knows which software exits (it IS available!) -- Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com