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Last year I used a Kyroflux [1] USB floppy controller and an old Teac floppy drive to successfully recover data from a collection of 5.25" floppies (DOS, Apple
by andyjohnson0 12y ago
Last year I used a Kyroflux [1] USB floppy controller and an old Teac floppy drive to successfully recover data from a collection of 5.25" floppies (DOS, Apple II, and BBC Micro). The disks dated from the mid 1980s. I'd previously tried an old desktop PC with a on-board floppy controller and the DOS disks were completely unreadable, but the Kryoflux managed to extract the files. I dind't have access to an Apple II or BBC Micro, but I expect that those disks were similarly unreadable.
End result was I got to read the source for some of the first programs and electronic documents that I wrote, which to me was worth the time and effort.
So its not necessarily quite true that "its over". But increasingly expensive and time-consuming measures are likely to be required.
(If anyone wants to buy an almost new Kryoflux then my email address is in my profile. I'm in the UK.)
[1] http://www.kryoflux.com/ http://www.kryoflux.com/
- jgrahamc 12y agoCan it be used to read 8" disks?
- andyjohnson0 12y agoI haven't tried this myself. However, there are various threads (eg. [1][2]) on the Kryoflux support forum where people have reported success, and others ([3][4]) that are more mixed. The Kryoflux manual [5] also says its works with an 8" Shugart 851 drive, and that there are firmware options to support 8" drive timings. According to an answer on [3] an 8" drive needs to be "Shugart compliant", and in [4] it is mentioned that an adapter made by DBIT is needed to convert the 34-pin floppy cable to the 50-pin interface apparently used by 8" drives. The Kryoflux I have wasn't supplied with a 50-pin cable, so that would need to be sourced. So, probably doable with some moderate effort... [1] http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=159 http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=159 [2] http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=887 http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=887 [3] http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=706 http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=706 [4] http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=56 http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=56 [5] http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=download#docs http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=download#docs