Date   : Sun, 02 Nov 2003 14:16:06 +0000
From   : Mike Tomlinson <mike@...>
Subject: Re: writing images to a drive-success!!!-How to do it.

In article <003901c3a13a$002b03e0$1902a8c0@...>, Darren T. Brown
<darren@...> writes

>System specs:
>Elite K7S5A, Athlon2100+, 512mb 2700DDR Ram
>Windows 98se
>Motherboard, nothing special, just a cheapy:
>Super I/O:  ITE IT8705F

Thanks very much.  This is useful info.  I have the same board and a
spare 1.2Mb drive so will be giving this a go one rainy day.  Sorry if
my last post seemed a bit bad-tempered; I've been struggling with this
on and off for several years and have 5 boxes of 5.25" disks, 100 per
box, cluttering up the desk less than 6 inches from my right hand which
I am keen to image and get rid of before they deteriorate.  Including
the ones in the loft, I have about 1000 5.25" floppies full of BBC
software.

It's also interesting that you're able to read/write disks on a 1.2Mb
drive; all my attempts to do this (on various PCs, 486 upwards) have had
mixed results.  Basically, once FDC returns an error, that's it:  no
further operations are possible and the floppy controller seems to enter
a state of limbo from which it is necessary to reset (power off and on)
to recover.

I've had the best results by connecting a BBC 40/80t drive direct to the
PC.

The K7S5A I have now runs Linux, so I will be looking into creating a
floppy device in /dev which will allow me to write a BBC disk from the
command line using dd.  I'd be interested to hear from anyone else
doing, or who has done, the same thing.

cheers,
Mike