On Mon, 23 Aug 2004, sety martin wrote:
I am trying to recover data from some 5.25 inch disks.
They came off an older Apple system. (Apple 2?).
I have tried using dd, Ghost, Encase, FTK, Winhex and
Norton Utilites to view/image these diskettes without
any success.
It is not clear to me if there is still valid data on
these disks. My experience has shown me that data on
a 5.25 inch can get corrupted over time. Does anyone
know if the tools above could successfully read these
disks? I am using a 1.2 Mb drive. If these tools
can't do the job, does anyone know of a definitive way
to get at this data using an x86 or Sun system?
Well, you *do* have a challenge!
You first problem is which Apple ][ format they are...the most
popular ones were DOS 3.2 (13 sector), DOS 3.3 (16 sector), the CP/M varient
of the DOS 3.3, and later ProDOS. All but the last were single side
floppies. As such, people trying to save money would sometimes cut a
write-enable notch on the other side of the disk, so that they could flip
the disk over and get essentially two disks for the price of one. The only
problem with this is that disks were generally designed to only spin one
way, and since they were spinning back and forth on a "flippy" disk, their
"lifetime" would be reduced.
You next problem is the way Steve Wozniak (aka The Woz) designed his
disk controller for the Apple ][. It was very simple, and the DISK ][
controller was very cheap to produce compared to other drive controllers.
Later, they put it all onto a chip labled IWD (Infernal Wozniak Device). To
boot a disk, you needed to make sure that it was on track 0...so all he did
was backstep the drive 33 times to make sure you were at track 0...that is
the "clackclackclack" sound Apple ][ drives made when booting...but
eventually, this introduced a problem...all that abuse caused the drive head
to go out of alignment. Many heavy Apple ][ users would drill a hole in the
rear of the drive's case to easily access the trim screw for the head, and
run one of the popular tools to align the heads, like the one included in
Locksmith, to align the heads. If it wasn't done periodicly, disks created
as the head went further out of alignment would not be read by drives that
were.
Another problem is that you are using a 1.2 Meg drive, and although
it is theoretically possible to access a single sided single density disk,
in reality it's practically impossible. You *need* at 360K drive.
As for any Windows based tools to access the data...you need to find
an Apple ][, /// or gs emulator. There are many of them available. With an
emulator and a 360K 5.2" drive, you should be able to extract the data off
the disks.
Alternately, check EBAY, I just looked and an Apple IIgs with 5.25"
and 3.5" drives just went for $4. Apple ][+'s are much more expensive, as
there is some collector value to them.
Please feel free to contact me if you need more help.
ttyl
Farrell McGovern
Former Apple ][ Guru
---
"You say freedom is a word that you allow (Careful not to speak too loud)"
- 'Assimilation' by J. Black & F. McGovern
Check out my Tech Journal at http://slashdot.org/~farrellj/journal/
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