Each case is an individual when the following are true: *Hardsector or non PC producable media. * No monitor or front pannel to interact with. An example is the NS* Horizon system. The only rom is small and JUST enough to boot the OS. The disk is hard sector. Without one of the following as bootable, UCSD Psystem Pascal, NS*dos, CP/M for Horizon your dead. The fix, one of several really. You need about 1k of eprom in the system with a very basic monitor that allows setting memory moving blocks of memory and the like. the CPUB (STD NS* Z80 board) can be populated with the bits needed to use a 2708. Or if available a SBC880 (has ram and rom on it), Compupro CPUZ (with eprom installed). or use a Eprom/Rom card with a monitor program installed to get software console. The basic theme here is being able communicate with the base hardware. Having an IMSAI or ALTAIR front pannel machine works too. Serial port to the serial port of a emulator. Serial por tot PROCOMM on PC. Once again if the machine is like the NS* you will have to use the native OS to write a program to upload sectors for assembly as an archive. If the native OS is LIKE CP/M or similar with and editor, assembler and debugger your golden. The reverse is harder and very system dependent. First you must have enough rom with a program (See NS* case) to communicate at some level. If you can do that it's possible to hand enter code to do whatever is needed to assemble media. Painful, you bet but I've done it. Procom or other terminal emulator and a CPM program called unload to make into an ASCII hexfile for upload and transport. This assumes you have a system that can actually read it. If not it's just some media and might as well be blank. See above cases. IF you do not have the system and drive that wrote that tape the usefulness is seriously in doubt. It really is close to finding a reel of magtape on the side of the road maybe worse. You MUST have the drive or one of the same type with similar interface or reading it may be just an exercise. The bootable 5" disk you boot it and then write a utility to read it serially to another box (PC whatever). The only one that can help is someone thats in the same space and with similar or same hardware. IF the media matches hardware you have running another OS then sending sectors via serial line is doable ad my even be easy depending on OS. Systems like that you have to know it inside out and side ways. Unless some one can using a similar one write you disks all the code on the internet is mostly meaningless if you can not enter it somehow and execute it. Generally speaking if I can talk to the hardware, and there is at least one serial port the problem can be beaten but usualy as a one off case. Best example I can give is years ago. NEC PDA-80, one of 12 in the country and I had 4 of them, two were operable. NO OS. Front pannel machine with a disk controller for 5,25" floppy that with a few commands could read or write a sector of data to/from it's buffer. Task, put CP/M 2.2 up for the first time. The only system available was intel MDS 8". Note this was before the PC had IBM on the front. The transfer media was paper tape and ASR33 TTY! A program was written and assembled on the MDS to implement a simple bin loader, the loadeer was for hand entry via the front pannel. That loader read the first tape that had a hex loader to load the hex tape with CPM (6.5k of code!). It took six tries to get the CP/M prompt for the first time and two more to get a floppy written with boot tracks. Then I had to get, PIP, STAT, ED, DDT, ASM, LOAD and an improved BIOS source transfered all as hex format paper tape. Pip was first as it is a file transfer program. It can be done, and it's not always easy. Allison