8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

[Kieron Wilkinson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nico de Jong
>
> Well, that does not really help very much, as a 
> track-by-track dump does not take the niceties of CP/M into 
> account, such as directory structure and where the various 
> segments are written. As you speak about 8" disks, we also 
> have to take the segment size (often 256 or 512, on some 
> formats 1024) into account.

Eeek.

My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring
out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems
means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad
enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;)

But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences.

> A "photocopy" of a disk is possible using (MS)DOS, if you can 
> find a MicroSolutions Compaticard IV (I have one, and no, I 
> dont want to part with it).
> This card works very well; I once generated a bootable MS-DOS 
> 3.1 (or 3.20?) 8"
> floppy.

Nice.

> The only (in my opinion) good solution, is software reading 
> the CP/M (or
> whatever) disk, and decode the filestructure etc., so you can 
> write a nice, continuous file.

Absolutely, my only concern was getting that wrong. But perhaps it is
far simpler operation to work out the file system with CP/M than getting
a track dump the disk, in which case this method is probably more
appropriate.

Of course one reason (off topic!) to dump the whole disk (down to the
flux-transition level) is to ensure you get absolutely everything on the
disk. But of course, this is only really useful for retail software that
might have applied copy protection - not really applicable for a
developers old development system! :)

Thanks!
Kieron

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