8" floppy system needed to recover old game data - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 Oct 2005

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Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data
   From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
   Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:06:17 +0000
     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>

 I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM
systems. Could you please
tell me why a conversion system is needed?  
   It all depends on what system they were written on. There are hundreds
if not thousands of different CPM formats. Some of them are litterally one
of a kind and were only used on one type computer and can not be read on 
Hundreds but not thousands.  It was not as bad as it seems as many 
systems could handle thir native formats plus a few.

...
 anything else. A good example is the M2FM format that
Intel used on their
MDS machines. 
That was a really breaker. As that could only read it's own.

...
 Some also used hard sectored disks and there's no
way that a
modern disk controller can deal with that.  OTOH if you're lucky, they used 
In the 8" world there were fewer formats and most of the systems that
were hard sector (altair and some text management systems) didn't run CP/M.

Beside in the 8" world CP/M itself had established that 8" SSSD was the
interchange format.

For 8" stuff the prognosis is not so bad.  However the media is so old that
may be more of a problem with oxide shedding.

Allison