28 Nov
2006
28 Nov
'06
4:39 p.m.
All:
Here's an interesting one. I have several disk images for the
Tandy 2000 that had been made with TeleDisk. One of the images is bad for
some reason (must be truncated; won't get past track 30; complains that
target disk drive is not ready when it reaches T30). The original disk is
not available.
I've done the basic troubleshooting on the drive and media
(other images made with same new floppy diskette and drive work fine;
swapped drive and media) to eliminate them from the failure tree.
Even though TeleDisk seems to write to track 30 just fine, the
disk is unusable. This is odd because it's an MS-DOS format (although 80T
9S) so all of the directory and media parameter info is at the front of the
disk rather than the back.
Is there anything I can do with this partial disk image to
retrieve at least some of the info?
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
Web site: <http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/>
http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
Web site: http://www.altair32.com/
/***************************************************/
28 Nov
28 Nov
4:50 p.m.
Rich,
If you're referring to disk 2 of the BIOS sources,
have you looked at it in a text editor? I know there's
lots of funky formatting codes, but that looks like
that's all you're going to get (and the code is
plainly visible). I don't know what happened when I
imaged that disk, it did report a bad sector (as did
disk 4) but it kept going FWIR. Apparently there's
more to that disk then the image contained, or at
least should be - I don't know what happened. I did
find that box of disks over the holiday, so I'll try
to redo it (w/ID even). I can't really say when I'll
have the oppurtunity though.
I don't know anything about the Catweasel thing, but
if you think that can do a better job of creating a
proper image (if there's any chance) I'll send you the disks.
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4:55 p.m.
and I know it's going to sound strange, but I have had
pretty good luck making images with WinImage. If I'm
not bonkers, I do also seem to recall not only making
an image of my original T2K quad DOS floppies with it,
but being able to simply read it in a W2K box. If you
have a unit with 2K or 98, I suggest playing around
with some of those disks (presumably you've imaged
whatever you have already), or disks created from
images. I can't remember whether I "zapped" them first
or not. Something tells me it didn't make a difference.
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1 Dec
1 Dec
7:46 p.m.
Here's an interesting one. I have
several disk images for the
Tandy 2000 that had been made with TeleDisk. One of the images is bad for
some reason (must be truncated; won't get past track 30; complains that
target disk drive is not ready when it reaches T30). The original disk is
not available.
I've done the basic troubleshooting on the drive and media
(other images made with same new floppy diskette and drive work fine;
swapped drive and media) to eliminate them from the failure tree.
Even though TeleDisk seems to write to track 30 just fine, the
disk is unusable. This is odd because it's an MS-DOS format (although 80T
9S) so all of the directory and media parameter info is at the front of the
disk rather than the back.
Is there anything I can do with this partial disk image to
retrieve at least some of the info?
I know this won't help you with this problem, however I'd like to point out that
this is exactly the reason I created ImageDisk - ImageDisk is a replacement
for TeleDisk that has an open and documented disk image format, utilities for
extracting/merging tracks, converting to/from raw binary, and many options
to help accomodate those times when you need to do exceptional data recovery.
Full source code to the main program and utilties is also available. The whole
point behind ImageDisk is to give you the information and tools you need to
attempt data recovery by "any and all other means" if you find yourself in a
situation like this.
Regarding your teledisk image - is it possible that the original disk was copy
protected, or for some other reason had a non-standard format? - If for
example, there were a single-density track in the middle of it (say on track
30) - MANY PC's would be unable to recreate the disk and might exhibit
symptoms similar to what you describe. Chuck wrote a very useful TESTSD
program which helps identify PCs which can do SD - I have it posted on my
site. I've also found that for some formats it can help a lot to slow the drive
slightly - This is common in Cromemco formats - probably not the case with
a DOS format, but it is a Tandy variation and you never know - worth a
try.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
6378
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3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
dave06a＠dunfield.com -
rcini＠optonline.net