Re: Extracting files off “unknown” 8 inch disks. Any thoughts…

[Chuck Guzis]

On 03/22/2017 03:49 PM, Terry Stewart via cctalk wrote:

> Anyway, has anyone else faced this kind of challenge and what are
> your thoughts?  I don’t want to start unless I at least have some
> chance of success.  I’m not hopeful.  The more I read the more you
> seem to need real forensic skills and something like Kyroflux that
> works at low-level.


I do it all the time.   There are more variations out there than you'd
otherwise think.   Not everything looks like DOS or CP/M, by a long shot.

I just received a shipment of hard-sector Wang 8 inchers, along with a
bunch of 8" soft-sector Displaywriter floppies.   Neither is CP/M or
DOS--or anything that Tandy ever built.

If I don't know what's on the disk (i.e. unlabeled), I'll start by using
an MS-DOS machine than can handle SD floppies--assuming that they're
soft-sector.

After that, I'll pull out my Catweasel-equipped system and crunch the
raw pulses--you could be dealing with MMFM or GCR, for example.

--Chuck