[sebhc] Re-creating actual floppies from archive

[Dwight Elvey]

Hi John
 You'll find the bootstrap loader at:

http://www.sebhc.org/archive/utilities/H89LDR9.ZIP

 You can tell the soft sectored from the hard. I think
all hard sectored cards use a 8250 chip and the
hard sectored cards use a more standard disk controller
chip.

 So far, we haven't been dealing with softsectored.
Maybe it is time we collected some. There must be a few on the
list with soft sectored disk and drives.
 There are a number of image formats out there for capturing
soft sectored disk( things like teldisk ). I am recommending
that we go with a format that the image format it self is
in public domain. There is a fellow in one of the mail groups
I'm in that has a good tool for capturing disk images
and writing images on PC's. Even if his tool goes away,
writing the part to copy the images to and from disk
on a PC are not that hard. The spec could be posted on
our page as well, along with the images. That would go a
long way towards maintaining a useful archive.
 What are thought of others??
 

>From: "John Maxwell" <maxwell at acsu.buffalo.edu>
>
>Gentlemen,
>    I forgot to mention that I think that one of my H89s uses two 
>half-height soft-sector-controlled drives and the other two use the 
>standard single hard-sector-controlled drive. I am trying to remember 
>from when these arrived which was which, I was told, but my memory is a 
>bit foggy - it has been a long time (> 4 years!) since I put these up on 
>the bench. Each passes the internal memory test (several octal passes, 
>too!) :-)
>
>    I would very much be interested in the utility to bootstrap the 
>machine(s). Please send the link and I'll get started this upcoming 
>weekend! I have at least one machine dedicated to file transfer and it 
>boots DOS v6.22. I use Kermit and other communications applications on it.
>
>    Thanks to both for your responses and your help.
>
>    Take care,
>      -John
>
>Robin England wrote:
>
> > Hello John
>
> > Are your H89 drives the hard-sectored or soft-sectored type?
>
> > Rgds
> > Robin
>
>
>and Dwight Elvey wrote:
>
>> Hi John
>>  As Robin notes, so far, all of the images
>> on the ftp are for hard sectored drives and not
>> for soft sectored ( as far as I know ).
>> There is a utility on the ftp, that I wrote,
>> that you can use to bootstrap your machine
>> to a bootable disk if it is hard sectored.
>> You need a PC running DOS ( not a DOS window
>> under windows but boots to DOS ). You'll
>> need a cable connecting the PC to a serial
>> card in the the H89 on the printer port
>> ( You'll need to make sure the wires are
>> 1 to 1 in the serial cable and that the
>> serial card has the normal jumpering ).
>>  You enter about 50 bytes from the monitor
>> that loads a basic serial loader. You then
>> download from the PC a disk driver that
>> will create a bootable disk from one of the
>> OS images on the ftp.
>>  You need to follow the instructions exactly
>> that come with the program. Most all failures
>> to work are caused by missing some step.
>>  Of course, you'll need some 10 hard sectored disk
>> as well.
>> Dwight
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>>From: "John Maxwell" <maxwell at acsu.buffalo.edu>
>>>
>>>Hi All,
>>>   I have downloaded several floppy images from the archives and was 
>>>searching for a utility to convert them back to real floppies. None of 
>>>my three H89s have a boot diskette at the moment, so I would need to 
>>>create diskettes on an IBM PC. Does anybody have a verified method for 
>>>doing this? I looked in the archive folders and didn't find anything 
>>>that was apparent.
>>>   Could somebody please point me to an IBM utility for doing this? I 
>>>would appreciate it.
>>>
>>>   Take care,
>>>      -John
>>>
>>>
>>>-- 
>>>
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