Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Anything related to the tools Tap2Wav, Tap2CD, Tap2Dsk, Sedoric Disc Manager, Tape Header Creator, WriteDsk, and generaly speaking tools related to the management of Oric data files and devices.
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iss
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Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »



This is a since-long-time planed project...

The main goal is to back-up 20+ pcs. 3-inch floppy disks, so I can use them for tests by upcoming DiskCopy program.
There are many options for Raw-Flux-readers but I choose Greaseweazle because:
  • it's very easy to build (especially the 'F1 "Blue Pill": Direct Connection' version);
  • the software is cross platform, well supported and documented;
  • it's open source - can be modified to suit better any Oric specifics...
Everything work nice!
But as expected it's not all-in-one nor single-click solution when it comes to Oric disk formats usable in emulators.
There are many interesting details which I found during the back-up process. I will post the progress here hoping to be helpful!
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »

About the different types of 3-inch drives and disks.

Recetly @DBug twitted his experience with "making 3-inch disks double-sided".
Here what I found when trying to insert a single-notched disk with it's B-side up:
disk.jpg

I have 3 different drives and ...:
3-inch-drives.jpg
The single-head HITACHI HFD305S and the double-head SANKYO FDU-300 accept and work fine on the B-side without extra notch :D.
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Symoon »

I always wondered if such cards could be helpful when the disk can't be read with Sedoric on Oric, or Readdsk on PC.
Like being able to have the raw information so we could rebuild it from the very basic raw data, despite normal reading not being able to find some tracks. I guess I'm dreaming but after all that's what I do sometimes with tape WAVs (but of course it's easier).

I'm asking because I have a bunch of old 3" disks that I've never been able to read (or fully read), including original programs or disks from Fabrice Broche.
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »

Symoon wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 2:22 pm I always wondered if such cards could be helpful when the disk can't be read with Sedoric on Oric, or Readdsk on PC....
Yep, this is the plan exactly!
I've made a bunch of tries to copy disks to Gotek with original hardware but no success.
Having the flux data (like high quality WAV) gives more chanches to extract data.
There will be work because Oric image formats are almost not supported but it's a start after all.

I don't expect to find something very rare on my disks but who knows...
Actually there is a pack of amateur radio software (RTTY, etc.) which I can't find archived (for instance on oric.org).
Maybe it's not interesting but any piece Oric software deserves to be preserved! :D

And here is a question for home work:
if I have only single-side drive then would be possible to rip a double-sided floppy disk by 'reversing' the bit stream of the second side? :)
(I really don't know the answer yet although I think it can be done, so will check and post the result).
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Symoon »

iss wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 7:41 pm
Symoon wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 2:22 pm I always wondered if such cards could be helpful when the disk can't be read with Sedoric on Oric, or Readdsk on PC....
Yep, this is the plan exactly!
Excellent! I suspect one can rebuild the data from the MFM (or whatever) transitions, would it require some automated process (or days, by hand ;) )
I always found it frustrating that because a track wasn't found, the disk couldn't be read.

Please let use know if you ever have any success with damaged disks ;)
Just a few of mine below ("super DOS" from Fabrice Broche and Denis Sebbag may be an ancestor to Sedoric for instance)
DSC_1492.JPG
EDIT: you make me wonder if some of the B-sides that couldn't be read didn't need a disk swap instead of a double-side transfer... I must say I'm a bit lost too with the way are supposed to work those "either filp to side 2" or "double head reading".
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by kailokyra »

I have dumped a few discs for the Atmos and Telestrat as well with a "Pauline" (similar tool as Greaseweazle / Kryoflux etc).

Like here with Origraph : https://archive.org/details/microfutur- ... -3-floppy/

Image
Or here with a damaged floppy or Defense-Force : https://archive.org/details/0-defense-f ... -flux-dump

Image

The resulting dump could still be fixed by merging the damaged tracks/sectors with the one from another copy :). Using the HXC Floppy emulator software (https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_drive_emulator/). At least you can still view the content of the sectors, and it also helps to see which areas of the disc might be damaged or need some further cleaning (make sure to inspect the surface of the floppy for mold before trying to dump them !)

Unfortunately, the Oric DSK exporter on the software seems broken as of now, someone will have to fix it or use another program that would be capable of converting the flux dump to a usable dsk, or implement .hfe support into an emulator :)
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Dbug »

With these tools (Greaseweazle, Pauline, etc...) is there a chance to recreate the 3" floppies from a modern PC, from existing DSK files?
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

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Dbug wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:40 am With these tools (Greaseweazle, Pauline, etc...) is there a chance to recreate the 3" floppies from a modern PC, from existing DSK files?
Oric DSK need to be converted first to HFE then Greaseweazle can write back to 3" floppy.

The biggest problem so far is that all flux parsers are made for specific track layout and don't "understand" Oric disks with (for instance) 19 sectors (I have some of this 44 tracks with 19 sectors :shock:). Of course this important only when we want to use saved images with emulators.

Other oddities are:
- drive speed - my drives are 299, 296 and 294 rpm (instead of 300 rpm) and I'll use them "as is" for now because I don't know which one was used with which disk;
- settle timings - GW starts the motor, reads data immediately and turns motor off, then repeats again for next track - this look somehow unstable, so I have to make some hacking that after motor start GW waits some time allowing the spindle to accelerate and become stable and then read all tracks without motor-turn-offs.

Else I already have the idea to make Oricutron to read/write directly trough GW ;).
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by kailokyra »

Greaseweazle and Kryoflux are capable of writing back images to a real disc using (as long as they're flux dumps, but you could probably convert an existing dsk to whatever other supported flux format used by their respective softwares to do that using the hxc tool, it might need some fixing for the oric dsk import thought).

I don't think Pauline has the ability to write back yet but I may be mistaken
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »

kailokyra wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:22 am...
@kailokyra: Great work, unfortunately all your images at archive.org are kind of damaged. I don't expect that mine will be better :(.

@all: Is there any tool already which can print (and/or visually show) which sectors are occupied by which file in a SEDORIC DSK image?
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Symoon »

iss wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:36 am @all: Is there any tool already which can print (and/or visually show) which sectors are occupied by which file in a SEDORIC DSK image?
Oric tool or PC/whatever tool ?
I think on Oric some tool might exist, since there were undelete tools.

On PC or other, this could be rather easy I think, as IIRC the catalog entry (starting track 20, sector 4) leads you to a descriptor sector (which can be chained to others if one is not enough) with the list of the sectors used by the file (well, there are exceptions and it might not bea "easy", but on 99% it shouldn't be too hard).
Last edited by Symoon on Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Chema »

kailokyra wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:27 am I have dumped a few discs for the Atmos and Telestrat as well with a "Pauline" (similar tool as Greaseweazle / Kryoflux etc).
Really nice!
kailokyra wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:27 am ...
or implement .hfe support into an emulator :)
This would be indeed an excellent idea. Some people are using floppy emulators or FPGA implementations that support hfe, but not the Oric DSK format. This is forcing them to keep disks in basically two different formats.

But do you know what would be even better? Support (in an emulator, that is) for the edsk format. I think almost all programs support converting between hfe and edsk. It is the format used in the Speccy and CPC, so we may be confident it will have support for quite long, it supports protected disks and is not far from our DSK format.
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »

Good news! The first survivor is here - "Jeux Aventures" :).
ja-1.jpg
100% restored. Contains well known games (attached ZIP file). Interesting is the start menu.
Else the surprise was the disk format: both side are used as single-side 44 tracks 19 sectors :shock: But why, why?...

Will post later about the dump process which is long but there is good chance to have new nice tools for Oric ;).
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by Chema »

Guys, we need a section where we could store all these dsk images with (patched) games so we can play from disks. Also those patched to work with Erebus.

I have the (horribly) translated to Spanish version of Le Rendez-vous de la Terreur. It was buggy, and not the best thing, but it was my first adventure game.
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Re: Archiving 3-inch disks with Greaseweazle

Post by iss »

Well, I've finished the archiving and I can say I'm happy with the result.
In overall I was able to read all 25 disks (some double-sided) and the content is saved ~95%.
Attached ZIP contains 31 DSK files. Here is the list:

Code: Select all

-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:19    Archives-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:20    Archives-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 01:13    Empty-slave-43-19.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 00:01    Gestion-Bibliotheque2-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:11    Gestion-Bibliotheque-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:14    Gestion-Bibliotheque-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:29    Jeux-Arcade2-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:34    Jeux-Arcade2-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 22:16    Jeux-Arcade-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 22:16    Jeux-Arcade-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 18:12    Jeux-Aventures-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 18:12    Jeux-Aventures-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 23:02    Jeux-de-Simulation-A.dsk
-rw-r--r--  281856 Jun 14 23:02    Jeux-de-Simulation-B.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 02:36    Minitel-soft-00.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 01:10    Pictures-00.dsk
-rw-r--r--  537856 Jun 15 02:13    Programmes-de-Pompage-Telestrat.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 02:41    Programmes-de-Radio-00.dsk
-rw-r--r--  537856 Jun 17 02:29    Programmes-de-Radio-01.dsk
-rw-r--r--  537856 Jun 17 03:09    Programmes-de-Radio-02.dsk
-rw-r--r--  537856 Jun 17 21:39    RTTY-for-Oric-00.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 15 01:21    RTTY-for-Oric-01.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:39    Sedoric-1.6-Master.dsk
-rw-r--r--.1638656 Jun 17 02:08    Sedoric-3.6-DF-80-17.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:43    Software-00.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:50    Software-01.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 14 23:57    Software-02.dsk
-rw-r--r--  269056 Jun 16 02:37    Software-03.dsk
-rw-r--r--  537856 Jun 15 02:23    Stratoric-1.0.dsk
-rw-r--r-- 1638656 Jun 17 00:25    Stratsed-2.0c-DF-42-17.dsk
-rw-r--r-- 1638656 Jun 17 00:25    Stratsed-2.0c-Telestrat.dsk
Most of the disk are without DOS so you'll need Sedoric.
After boot change the loaded DSK and run what you want (HELLO, BONJOUR etc is good start ;))

IMHO most precious programs are for amateur Radio, RTTY, Minitel (and 'Programmes-de-Pompage' :shock: ) although I don't how to use them...

That's all for now - yet I have lot free disks for experiments.
If someone needs any details related to disk dumping (hardware or software utilities) do not hesitate to ask here!
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