4 Apr
2012
4 Apr
'12
2:03 a.m.
Hello All,
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write Commodore disks. Has anyone done this
? From what I gather you just get the board and you can get the floppy cable and a power
supply and power cord. But you need to buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the
Commodore disks. That is Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
Jeffrey Brace
4 Apr
4 Apr
8:14 a.m.
Am 04.04.2012 08:03, schrieb Jeffrey Brace:
Hello All,
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write Commodore disks. Has anyone done this
? From what I gather you just get the board and you can get the floppy cable and a power
supply and power cord. But you need to buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the
Commodore disks. That is Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
Jeffrey Brace
For Commodore, it is easier to obtain an old 1541 drive at some auction
site or flea market and then buy or solder a centronics<->commodore
cable (google: X1541).
Commodore floppies are not HD, so a HD floppy drive probably won't work
correctly for writing. You should find a DD 35/40 Trk drive which is
surely available from the auction site or flea market as well but can
well cause more hassle than a (working) 1541/71 drive which understands
Commodore's obscure GCR format already.
--
Holger
9:12 a.m.
--- On Wed, 4/4/12, Jeffrey Brace <arkaxow at gmail.com> wrote:
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write
Commodore disks. Has anyone done this ? From what I gather
you just get the board and you can get the floppy cable and
a power supply and power cord. But you need to buy a HD PC
floppy drive and then can read the Commodore disks. That is
Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
You don't want to use a PC HD drive, Commodore disks are 40 track (OK, well, 35 track,
but still), the narrower head of the 80 track PC drive will cause problems if you want to
write.
If you just want to read and write Commodore 1541 disks, why not use a Commodore 1541
drive and a simple cable to connect it to the PC's parallel port, and run Star
Commander?
Or, Jim Brain's ZoomFloppy connects a Commodore 1541 drive to USB, if you want to go
that route.
I think either method would be more suitable for Commodore disks.
-Ian
9:19 a.m.
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write
Commodore disks.
Why not get a xum1541-style device like a ZoomFloppy? Open source hardware
and software, works great with Mac, Windows and Linux (I ported opencbm to
PowerPC and happily image .d64s from a 1571 and my G5).
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Why is it you can only trust short, dumpy spies? -- Hogan, "Hogan's
Heroes"
8 p.m.
On 4/4/2012 8:19 AM, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
If you can provide a link, I'll post it on the product page for others.
--
Jim Brain
brain at jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com
I was
considering buying KryoFlux to read and write Commodore disks.
Why not get a
xum1541-style device like a ZoomFloppy? Open source hardware
and software, works great with Mac, Windows and Linux (I ported opencbm to
PowerPC and happily image .d64s from a 1571 and my G5).
11:13 p.m.
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write
Commodore disks.
Why not get a xum1541-style device like a ZoomFloppy? Open source hardware
and software, works great with Mac, Windows and Linux (I ported opencbm to
PowerPC and happily image .d64s from a 1571 and my G5). 
9:56 a.m.
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541 disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
as others have mentioned, Jim Brains ZoomFloppy really is the best solution,there's
nibtools to read the disks.even protected disks will work
From: arkaxow at gmail.com
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 02:03:31 -0400
Hello All,
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write Commodore disks. Has anyone done this
? From what I gather you just get the board and you can get the floppy cable and a power
supply and power cord. But you need to buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the
Commodore disks. That is Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
Jeffrey Brace
10 a.m.
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541
disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
The controller won't read 1541 disks, but the drive will if you use
something like the Catweasel MK4+. I've archived 1541 disks in D64 format
with a MK4+ and a bog-standard 360KB drive.
Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/
10:15 a.m.
so that's not a regular drive in a PC as the poster was probably indicating.
this whole thread was looking at KryoFlux.
I know catweasel can work, but I'm not so sure it works very well with protected
disks.
I've heard of people using catweasel with 1541 drives, mounted in their PC's
also.
but there's no way you're going to get a cleaner, more compatible interface than
zoomfloppyand a real 1541...
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 10:00:05 -0400
From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: RE: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore
1541 disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
The controller won't read 1541 disks, but the drive will if you use
something like the Catweasel MK4+. I've archived 1541 disks in D64 format
with a MK4+ and a bog-standard 360KB drive.
Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ 
10:09 a.m.
On Apr 4, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541 disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
Well, the *drive* will, because it just sends the raw signals out
its connector. A PC floppy *controller* will not handle the data
encoding, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the drive itself.
You can read GCR-encoded Mac 400/800k disks with a PC floppy drive
and an appropriate controller, too. Products like KryoFlux,
DiskFerret and the like are designed to do just that and more.
Writing is a different matter, because the narrower gap on an HD
head won't necessarily make a big enough flux transition for the
lower-density heads to pick up reliably. The data format isn't
the problem there, it's signal levels and magnetic domain sizes.
- Dave
10:19 a.m.
those are very different from commodore disks,someone already mentioned commodore have up
to 40 tracks,what about half-tracks, and copy-protected disks?
will they read v-max disks?commodore software got heavily into copy protection,like
rapidlok, and worse in the later days
I think if you did a feature by feature comparisoncatweasel vs Diskferret vs KryoFlux vs
Zoomfloppythe winner would be obvious.
Dan.
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
From: fraveydank at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 10:09:34 -0400
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
On Apr 4, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541 disks.not a chance in hell.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally incompatible.
Well, the *drive* will, because it just sends the raw signals out
its connector. A PC floppy *controller* will not handle the data
encoding, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the drive itself.
You can read GCR-encoded Mac 400/800k disks with a PC floppy drive
and an appropriate controller, too. Products like KryoFlux,
DiskFerret and the like are designed to do just that and more.
Writing is a different matter, because the narrower gap on an HD
head won't necessarily make a big enough flux transition for the
lower-density heads to pick up reliably. The data format isn't
the problem there, it's signal levels and magnetic domain sizes.
- Dave
11:15 a.m.
for those of us who arent that familiar with all the mentioned
products,which obvious winner would it be?
Keith.
On 4/4/2012 10:19 AM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
those are very different from commodore disks,someone already mentioned commodore have up
to 40 tracks,what about half-tracks, and copy-protected disks?
will they read v-max disks?commodore software got heavily into copy protection,like
rapidlok, and worse in the later days
I think if you did a feature by feature comparisoncatweasel vs Diskferret vs KryoFlux vs
Zoomfloppythe winner would be obvious.
Dan.
11:21 a.m.
On Apr 4, 2012, at 11:15, Keith Monahan <keithvz at verizon.net> wrote:
for those of us who arent that familiar with all the mentioned products,which obvious
winner would it be?
Rather subjective, I think. :-)
But ZoomFloppy is specifically meant for CBM disks. If you don't need a generic
solution, it's probably best.
- Dave (sorry for long lines, phone)
11:25 a.m.
I'd say zoomfloppy, simply because of nibtools, which is the most feature-rich for
commodore disks I've found.especially where copy-protection is involved.
And, the fact it can write images back to disk gives it a distinct advantage.
this is only for commodore style disks, other platforms would have their preferred
tool(s).
Dan.
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:15:28 -0400
From: keithvz at verizon.net
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
for those of us who arent that familiar with all the mentioned
products,which obvious winner would it be?
Keith.
On 4/4/2012 10:19 AM, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
>
> those are very different from commodore disks,someone already mentioned commodore
have up to 40 tracks,what about half-tracks, and copy-protected disks?
> will they read v-max disks?commodore software got heavily into copy protection,like
rapidlok, and worse in the later days
> I think if you did a feature by feature comparisoncatweasel vs Diskferret vs
KryoFlux vs Zoomfloppythe winner would be obvious.
> Dan.
4:06 p.m.
Jeffrey Brace wrote:
> I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and
write Commodore disks. Has anyone done this ? From what I gather you just get the board
and you can get the floppy cable and a power supply and power cord. But you need to buy a
HD PC floppy drive and then can read the Commodore disks. That is Commodore 1541 disks.
Does this sound right ?
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
An HD PC floppy drive will *NOT* read commodore 1541
disks.not a chance in hell.
Sure it will. I've done it successfully on multiple
occasions.
PC drives are MFM, commodore are not. totally
incompatible.
The drive doesn't know MFM from FM, M2FM, GCR, or many other encodings
that could exist on a diskette. Only the controller in the PC is
limited to MFM and FM, and there are even ways around that; people have
successfully read Apple II floppies with the PC controller.
Unfortunately he trick used for that won't work for Commodore disks.
However, Jeffrey was talking about hooking up the drive to a KyroFlux,
not to a PC controller.
10:21 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and write
Commodore disks. Has
anyone done this ? From what I gather you just get the board and you can
get the floppy cable and a power supply and power cord. But you need to
buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the Commodore disks. That is
Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
What do YOU mean by "read" the disks?
Do you want access to the contents of the files, or are you archiving
them?
Kryoflux, and several others, will let you store and MAYBE recreate, but
if you think that you have file access, then you will need to write an OS
file-system.
10:36 p.m.
On 4/4/2012 9:21 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
Not to plug a product per se, but X*1541 and XU*1541 cables/adapters
will create D64 images from 1541 disks, which can be used with a myriad
of utilities and emulators designed to read such image formats.
JIm
--
Jim Brain
brain at jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com
I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and
write Commodore disks. Has
anyone done this ? From what I gather you just get the board and you can
get the floppy cable and a power supply and power cord. But you need to
buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the Commodore disks. That is
Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
What do YOU mean by "read"
the disks?
Do you want access to the contents of the files, or are you archiving
them?
Kryoflux, and several others, will let you store and MAYBE recreate, but
if you think that you have file access, then you will need to write an OS
file-system.
13 Apr
13 Apr
2:12 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Brain
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:36 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
Not to plug a product per se, but X*1541 and XU*1541
cables/adapters will
create D64 images from 1541 disks, which can be used with a myriad of
utilities and emulators designed to read such image formats.
JIm
I used an XA/XE 1541 adapter and it fried a few 1541 drives and my parallel
port on my PC. I will *never* use such a device again !
3:16 a.m.
I've been very happy with my ZoomFloppy USB<->?IEC? (commodore serial bus)
bridge adapter...
On Apr 12, 2012, at 11:12 PM, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Jim Brain
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:36 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
Not to plug a product per se, but X*1541 and
XU*1541 cables/adapters will create D64 images from 1541 disks, which can be used with a
myriad of utilities and emulators designed to read such image formats.
JIm
I used an XA/XE 1541 adapter and it fried a few 1541 drives and my parallel port on my
PC. I will *never* use such a device again !
11:35 a.m.
I've been very happy with my ZoomFloppy
USB<->?IEC? (commodore serial bus)
bridge adapter...
So am I. Loaded a number of Gazette disks onto my G5 yesterday.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- The optimum committee has no members. -- Norman Augustine ------------------
11:40 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Jim Brain
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:36 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
Not the same thing Jeffrey. The XU*1541 & ZoomFloopy are USB based
devices, not parallel port devices.
I've use my ZF to image about 500 disks and it's the cat's ass when it
comes to processing Commodore media.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a
server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck.
[Cipher in a.s.r]
Not to plug a product per se, but X*1541 and
XU*1541 cables/adapters will
create D64 images from 1541 disks, which can be used with a myriad of
utilities and emulators designed to read such image formats.
JIm
I used an XA/XE 1541 adapter and it fried a few 1541 drives and my parallel
port on my PC. I will *never* use such a device again !
12:04 p.m.
I used an
XA/XE 1541 adapter and it fried a few 1541 drives and my parallel
port on my PC. I will *never* use such a device again !
Not the same thing Jeffrey. The XU*1541 & ZoomFloopy are USB based
devices, not parallel port devices.
I've use my ZF to image about 500 disks and it's the cat's ass when it
comes to processing Commodore media.
2:10 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cisin
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:21 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: KryoFlux and Commodore Disks
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
> I was considering buying KryoFlux to read and
write Commodore disks. Has
> anyone done this ? From what I gather you just get the board and you can
> get the floppy cable and a power supply and power cord. But you need to
> buy a HD PC floppy drive and then can read the Commodore disks. That is
> Commodore 1541 disks. Does this sound right ?
What do YOU mean by "read" the disks?
I mean make KryoFlux do what it was designed to do. Whatever that is. I
assume make perfect images of disks.
Do you want access to the contents of the files, or are
you archiving
them?
I want to know how to use KryoFlux and make it work with Commodore 1541
floppies.
Kryoflux, and several others, will let you store and
MAYBE recreate, but
if you think that you have file access, then you will need to write an OS
file-system.
6 p.m.
>What do YOU mean by "read" the disks?
On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
I mean make KryoFlux do what it was designed to do.
Whatever that is. I
assume make perfect images of disks.
NOBODY can help until you DEFINE what that is supposed to mean.
Do you want
access to the contents of the files, or are you archiving
them?
I want to know how to use KryoFlux and make it work with Commodore 1541
floppies.
4460
days inactive
4469
days old
23 comments
13 participants
participants (13)
-
arkaxow＠gmail.com -
brain＠jbrain.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dgahling＠hotmail.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
fraveydank＠gmail.com -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
holger.veit＠iais.fraunhofer.de -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
keithvz＠verizon.net -
mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us -
spectre＠floodgap.com