Purpose of this program is making image files of floppies in first
place, for usage with emulators on PC. It works under Windows XP,
Win2K and later. For instance
it can fast
make images of 800KB, 1600KB floppies. It is thankfully to Simon Owen, who wrote
fdrawcmd - low level floppy driver, which overrides limitations of
standard Windowses floppy driver. Current version
0.97 works only with floppy drive A. Insert floppy to drive and click onicon
A at top left. It will read parameters of disk, and display
them. You my modify parameters by need, and if you know what are you
doing.
If boot sector is unreadable, you must set parameters - it may require
couple tries (and later need to hexedit image file). Scan floppy is for
determining parameters if they are non-standard, or boot sector is
damaged. It prints out sector numbers in tracks, hexadecimal. Range
of scan will be by values in Tracks
and Sides edit boxes.
To make image file click
on Floppy to Image,
choose ST, MSA or DSK, give filename and prg. will save it to standard
ST(=DSK)
or MSA file, and generate log file (if checked) with same name, but
extension
'log' - with
list of bad sectors by read. It will work fine with non-protected disks.
You may write images
(ST, DSK or MSA) to floppies, with or without format - if
format is
checked it will work slower, but may be necessary if target disk is
formatted with different parameters prior. In any case, before clicking
on Image to Floppy,
first insert floppy disk and click on A, then click Open Image File and
select. After it you may correct parameters if they aren't OK (case of
non-standard boot sector ). Note: write or format of 11
sector/track will not produce usable floppy - reason is inability of
PC's
floppy controller to do it. ST < > MSA
is for conversion
from ST to MSA or vice-versa of opened image file (with Open Image file but.) .
By floppies in bad condition it is worth to set Retries to value 2-5. Don't
expect miracles of it. My experience is that with old floppies is good
to repeat reading of whole disk 4-5 times, and it will have at
end less bad sectors.
Button Floppy to STT
saves images in STT format,
which is less known. It is Steem specific, and not fully developed. I
choosed it, because may be expanded, and is supported at least somehow.
For now, it can only save floppies with non-standard sector numbers on
tracks. Chaos Strikes Back partially works - it can be started, but no
position save (no weak sector flags in current STT spec.)
Button STT to floppy
writes STT images to floppies.
Small floppy shape button with text STT and question mark is for
getting track and sector layout of STT files. Select STT file, and
program will generate TXT file with same name. There is list of sectors
by tracks, after x is sectorsize code: 2 is regular 512 bytes, 3 is
1024 bytes etc...
Browsing, extracting & adding files from/to ST floppies:
You may extract & add files direct from/to floppies or
from images.
Click on Extract files,
or Extract from img.
button, and
will get following dialog: May select multiple files at once. It will save all in
current directory, which may be changed with button Dest Dir.
Opening subdirectory is possible via double-click on
it, or with button Open DIR
. Button DIR Up is
for back one subdir. level (to parent dir.). If DIR is selected program
will save all files from all subdirectories recursively.
When click Add files
you may select multiple files with Windows fileselector. Create
New folder by need on floppy. Under button enter directory name
by
standard DOS 8.3 filename system .Checkbox Current time (else filetime)
is for both extract and add files, and determines timestamp on copies
of files. Adding is possible to floppies and ST(DSK) image files.
For making things easier here is small archive with 2 empty floppy
images: Empty Floppies . One is standard
PC 720KB and other is
800KB, much used on ST. If you want to transfer (run) some files which
you have on PC - on ST,
just add them to empty image and then write it to floppy. With 720KB
one you have more ways - write
it to floppy, and then can add/delete to it with explorer or Total
Commander.
Sam Coupe floppy
file extraction:
From V 0.85 Sam Coupe floppy
support is added.
Here may select multiple files too.
From floppy
or DSK image files.
ZX Spectrum floppy PP format file
extraction and write:
If such format (for floppy interface on this site) is
detected following dialog will open when click on 'Extract files' :
Select side A
or B - then clicking on
files in left box selects them for transfer - they appear in right
box. With 'Save sel.'
it will be transferred to PC.
Resulting file may be TAP file
, Z80 snapshot. If
length ( last
column
at Cat: ) is 49152 it will be Z80. It is possible to save ZX
files directly, without header - just check 'Save bin.', and all will be
saved so, with extensions bin.
You may select max 32 files at
once. However, it is not wise to select lot of files for TAP at once -
because
all will go in single TAP file. Best way is as it is shown on pic.
above - first select BASIC loader and then CODE (after it). Most of
programs is recorded so. 'Erase sel.' is for erasing
ZX files. It works little unusual - may erasing only last file in
charea. But you may select again multiple files, just select them in
order from last to up . PC > ZX:
Click on 'PC > FloP' button, and
may
select multiple files with Win. fileselector: Supported
filetypes are: SCR -
ZX screen, exactly 6912 bytes long. SNA
- old snapshot files. Z80
snapshot - V 1.45, V 2.01 & V 3.0 ,
only for 48K, for now. Plus TAP
files and BINary files - bin
ones
will be copied directly as CODE files, with start address 25000, max
len. 48KB. Transfer mode depends on file extension. Because authors of
software, and
especially 'authors' of TAP files had pretty limited naming
imagination, and to prevent to see too often message like: I implemented some autonaming system. In case
of
duplicate name in TAP file, prog. will rename it to re.xxx.ZXfilename .
're' may be changed in editbox 'Rename:'. xxx is auto-counter
in range 1 to 255. If begin character is illegal (not A-z, 0-9)
it will be changed to 9. Codes above 127 and below 32 in filenames will
be changed to '?'- to make edit
easier.
After getting such renamed files it is good to correct BASIC loader,
and save datas with some meaningful names: Corrections will be needed
for commands like: LOAD "" -
it is not allowed by disk systems, so enter in brackets filename. Mine
ROM also not accepts LOAD "pic" SCREEN$ - change it to LOAD "pic" CODE
[16384] . Luckily, ZX filesystem is case sensitive, so you may play
with RePTON, rEpToN etc... .
In some cases transferred snapshot will not work - it is because of
limited hardware. Stack may be overloaded. In such case help is to make
another snapshot file on PC (looking for another on WEB). Rule is: make
snapshot when game is paused. In case of 'Name already exists' by
snapshots just simple rename PC file...
Some TAP files have headerless (and nameless) parts - such blocks will
be transferred
to files with names: hl.1.PCfilename, hl.2.PCfilename etc. Of course,
here is also possible to change prefix 'hl' to different - editbox 'H'less:'.
User must find way how to make later load of those files normally
- some machine code knowledge is necessary.
For experts: If I reg points to ROM, it must be #39 for IM 2 mode,
because ROM is full with code.
Future improvements, features: improving
imaging of non-standard, protected floppies. Adding some new image
formats ( DFI ).
I think here on protections like by 'Chaos Strikes Back' - it has on
first track sector number #F7 instead 8, and before it is one
'weak' sector. So, need image format which allows specific sector
numbers (STT has it), flags for weak sectors and CRC errors, plus ? ...
Then
emulator need to report CRC error by such sector read, and simulate
changeable content by successive reads.