| Author: | Alex G (registered user: 13 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Aug 28th, 2012 @ 10:51 ( . ) |
Finally started getting back to archiving my disks. I am still only doing ones without copy-protection thanks to the awesome ZoomFloppy. I've already sent some scans to Pete at the rittwage address (I don't see some of the images I sent over a year ago in the DB search though let me know if you need a resend. Example: Simon and Schuster SAT Prep). I am not looking for hand holding either, but I have a ton of original disks I could back up if someone could point me in the right direction for the next step. I think someone told me I needed jiffydos or something once I get to the point of backing up originals with copy protection. I am almost there. I have a ton of working originals. |
 | Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Aug 28th, 2012 @ 17:56 ( . ) |
Hello there. contact me by email and I will try to help you where I can. whocrazy@gmail.com. If you want to image copy protected titles, there are several options available, unfortunately, both require performing some hardware modifications to your device. If you would like to do this yourself or know someone who could do this for you, head on over to Peter schepers's site. [link] You don't need to go through the stress of building a parallel cable yourself, Peter can build one and send it to you. You will however, need to open up your drive and solder in the parallel port so that you will be able to use nibtools to copy disks. There is also a device on the market now called a KryoFlux, but like the 1541 option, it requires some modifications to your hardware. You will need to get a hold of a pc floppy 5.25 drive, and modify it to read both sides of the disk at once. I already have a modified 1541 with installed parallel port and xap1541 cable and I hope that by the end of the week I will also have my Kryoflux device fixed and ready to be used. If you feel uncomfortable or don't want to go through the hassle of finding someone to modify your hardware for you, you can send me your disks, and I will image them for you and then send them back. Contact me on whocrazy@gmail.com and we'll try and arrange something. |
| Author: | Alex G (registered user: 13 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Aug 28th, 2012 @ 18:06 ( . ) |
Hmm, yea, that might be a dead end for me because I'm pretty sure the last computer I had that had a parallel option has left the building. That's why I was so excited about the Zoom floppy, I used to use the XE1541, but no longer had a way to use it. Zoom Floppy works excellent for all my non-copy protected disks. At a certain point I will be done with all of the non-copy protected disks. I seem to be closing in on that right now and then I'll have to make a decision. I might list all my titles on here or something and if there's a hard-to-find we will figure something out. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Aug 29th, 2012 @ 00:42 ( . ) |
KryoFlux uses a USB connection, but write support is a little way off yet so you will have to wait a while. I never really liked the zoom floppy because I found it doesn't align tracks properly when writing back to disk. This is essential for getting some copy protected titles to work, so you'll either have to wait for a fix, find an old pc with a hardware parallel port (USB parallel port cards will not work) or wait for write support to be introduced to kryoflux. |
 | Author: | Nate (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Fri, Aug 31st, 2012 @ 19:00 ( . ) |
Alex, please disregard some of the other information provided on this thread. The ZoomFloppy can handle protected disks. All you need is the nibread program, included with the binary distribution. If you are using a 1571, it will work out of the box with nibread and nibwrite. Just use the "-s" flag or the CBMXfer GUI if you don't like the command line. If you are using a 1541 or compatible drive, you'll need to add a parallel cable between the drive and the ZoomFloppy. This involves opening the drive and inserting it under a socketed chip. It does not mean you need a parallel (printer) port on the PC side. This is a mod between the drive and the ZF. [link] hyperactive's complaint is not important in 99% of cases. What he's saying is that he wants to write back (not read) an image with special support for an index-hole sensor that you have to solder into your 1541. An IHS is not required to read protected floppies, and is only needed to remaster (write) a small set of them. In the future, nibtools could be updated to support this with the ZoomFloppy (software-only change) and it would work. So unless you run into this case, don't worry about it. The Kryoflux is a great device, but it currently barely supports writing at all. So I find it hard to complain about the ZoomFloppy's write support in comparison. Eventually, the KF will be updated to support writing really detailed bits, and it will always be better for that purpose. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Sat, Sep 01st, 2012 @ 00:48 ( . ) |
sorry, I probably didn't explain things clearly enough. In no way did I mean my statements to be misleading. I just thought it would help if I wrote about my experiences with the zoom floppy to prevent others from running into the same problems that I did. When remastering some games back to disk with nibwrite, I can align tracks by using the -t switch. Some protections require that some tracks be written out aligned a certain distance apart from each other. btw: I do not have an IHS. I have been able to successfully write tracks out this way this when using the parallel interface, but it's not been so successful when using the zoom floppy. Also, for some strange reason, I can't use my zoom floppy straight away, I have to switch the drive on and wait about half an hour for it to "warm up", if I try to use it before that time, I'll get strange errors and the connection to the drive will be all flaky. |
| Author: | Nate (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Tue, Sep 04th, 2012 @ 13:09 ( . ) |
Ok, thanks for clarifying. I will try the -t flag and see if I can figure out why it would fail for you. As for the drive warming up, that just sounds like a hardware problem on the drive side. No one else has reported that. |
 | Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Sep 04th, 2012 @ 14:14 ( . ) |
On 09/04/2012 @ 13:09, Nate wrote :
Ok, thanks for clarifying. I will try the -t flag and see if I can figure out why it would fail for you. : : As for the drive warming up, that just sounds like a hardware problem on the drive side. No one else has reported that. -- Nate, There are two ways the "timer" track alignment worked. In the original version, we calculated the motor speed and did approximate calculations of how long it took to "get back around" to the next revolution. We then just waited a bit and sent the next track. I later replaced this with code that runs inside the drive itself. It unformats the tracks (all 00) then writes a short sync to each while moving the heads across the disk. This causes a small skew, but works pretty well. I was never able to get the VIA timers programmed to wait exactly the right amount of time for the next revolution. We then use the "wait for sync" writing option to "align" the tracks. Now, with ZF, the extra commands used to tell the code to wait for a sync, or wait for IHS, don't work. They cause the ZF to timeout. I thought that Arnd had modified the ZoomFloppy firmware code to work at some point after release, but it may be lost, as I can't find the e-mail. -Pete |
| Author: | Nate (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Thu, Sep 06th, 2012 @ 13:41 ( . ) |
Thanks for clarifying, Pete. I'll look into this sometime soon. |
| Author: | Alex G (registered user: 13 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Sep 04th, 2012 @ 14:07 ( . ) |
Thanks Nate, I don't really plan on writing originals back to disk. Mostly I'm just looking to add them to the preservation project if I can. |