Most liked posts in thread: Floppy disk rescue

6.44am and playing Zybex, I like my shooters, but that is way too early for me

As you know if the disk has bit rot then repairing it may not be an option.. Personally if I was you I'd keep my real disk and just play a decent copy of it as you are legally entitled to do that. The only other thing would be to open up the disk carefully and write out a proper copy and replace the disk in the sleeve. Sadly I don't know if it copies with Happy or the like or how easy it is to turn an ATX disk in to a proper disk..

Ask on AA for better help..

 

Although I have never done this personally it should work like this:

Set the 1050 to D2: with the little flip switches inside the little hole at the rear of the drive, one is black, one white..Remember the previous setting.

Select an image of say Backup Master if its an unprotected image you want to write on the SIO2PC software (Aspeqt or APe etc), once its booted slap the game you want to copy on the SIO 2 PC and a blank in the 1050. Set the source as D1: and dest as D2: and hit whatever key starts it off, a min later you are all good..

 

PS, talking of shooters, there's a brill new version of Galaxians called Galaxians DX up. Totally free for the C64

https://arlagames.itch.io/galaxian-dx-c64

 

I did think that it might be unrecoverable, so I like the idea of writing a out a copy. Can you give me an idiots guide on how to do that when I have one 1050 and SIO2PCUSB and a FujiNet.

 

Hi, Rich.

How you getting on with this?

If you just need me to pop you a copy in the post - I have an item sat here with your name on it anyhow so it's no bother or can bring with me personally when I drop by sometime soon-ish in the run up to Chrimbo?

Zybex is class.

One of my top 5 shooters of all time on all formats.

If it worked, I would get out of bed earlier...

 

I am going to try Paul’s destructions and see if the disk is able to be reused. Is there a program for the Atari that can analyse disks on a sector/track level to see if any data is still readable.

 

There are programs to scan a disk, but with a protected disk it gets a bit tough unless you are a cracker or knowledgable of machine code and the workings of a disk drive internally. A protected disk will almost certainly show errors when scanned, but they are meant to be there as part of the protection and will make the game not work if they are not replicated. And there's the problem, just what are you looking at when you see errors, are they needed or are they just real unwanted errors. Add to that there numerous protection types where they number a certain number of sectors with the same sector number or make phantom sectors etc etc etc.

Easiest way, write a new disk out, if you fancy putting it in the original sleeve then be very careful. Hence, I only use images, I just do not trust real disks any more

 

That plays very nicely indeed, Paul.

Thanks a lot for that.

I used to rack up massive scores on this baby back in the day.

Great memories (usually 16K).