Format 720kb IBM floppies to 880kb Amiga format?

[psxphill]

I guess using the 765a makes the software a lot simpler (it just requests data at a particular location) but means it's much more limited because of it.
The Amiga I believe is basically just Paula chucking out bits which then have to get decoded, isn't it? I.e. great for copy protection, not so great for ease of use (hence Kickstart routines).

The PC was built from off the shelf parts and the upd765a was basically all that was available, you can make an argument for sector gaps or a track gap but what was available to them had sector gaps so it wasn't really a choice.
 
The Amiga had a better price/performance ratio because everything as custom and having a track gap is easier from the hardware point of view, so it was cheaper for them to design and build. The greater storage space was a side effect of that, I doubt they ever considered doing it any other way.
 
trackdisk.device would have existed no matter how the hardware worked though. Even on the PC you wouldn't talk directly to the floppy controller. The only real difference is that the Amiga generally uses the same code for booting from a floppy and once the operating system is loaded. While on the PC you have separate device drivers. Both ways have their merits.

[Blinx123]

That's a good plan
Just go for it. There are no PC and Amiga disks. Just DD floppies. Put them in your Amiga and format them at 880K. A good recipe to enjoy the holidays

Will do.

I've also just acquired a PC copy of Walt Disney's Animation Studio (brand new and still in it's shrinkwrap. My collector's itch was strong that day. Very strong), which I'll gladly convert to Amiga.

That way, I can probably use the remaining last floppy (the Amiga version only requires three while the IBM/Tandy comes on a total of four) for saving animations.

[persia]

Can Windows 7 or 8 even recognise a floppy, they've disappeared from hardware are they still in the OS?

[Lord Aga]

Yes, I use floppies under W7.
Had to format them on Amiga though.

[ncafferkey]

Will do.

I've also just acquired a PC copy of Walt Disney's Animation Studio (brand new and still in it's shrinkwrap. My collector's itch was strong that day. Very strong), which I'll gladly convert to Amiga.

That way, I can probably use the remaining last floppy (the Amiga version only requires three while the IBM/Tandy comes on a total of four) for saving animations.

What, you bought a collectable software package, and now you're going to overwrite the disks? I'll just say I find that thinking very strange.

[Matt_H]

What, you bought a collectable software package, and now you're going to overwrite the disks? I'll just say I find that thinking very strange.

Agreed. Just slap the Amiga version on some blank disks and throw them in the same box. First thing we did back in the day was to make backups of everything and keep them in the same place. It'll be just like that.

[Rabbi]

Don't forget to add the Breadbox Ensemble GUI on top of the DOS:

http://www.breadbox.com/ensemble/geocats.asp?category=Ease-of-Use

[Blinx123]

I tried turning on my Amiga 1200 for the first time today and already ran into some weird issue.

The workbench floppies I received with my Amiga 1200, although unused, are unreadable.
Whenever I try to boot from any of them, I'll be greeted with the very same message over and over "Not a valid DOS disk in drive DF0:".

Is this usually a hardware issue or something that can be solved by formating the floppies?

How do I find out if it's not my drive, besides throwing another bunch of floppies at it and potentially risking the life of perfectly fine floppies?

[Ral-Clan]

Don't try to reformat your Workbench floppies unless you want to erase them entirely (that's part of what formatting does).

It very well could be they are just old floppies suffering from bit-rot.  I.e. the magnetic data on them degrades over time.  After 20 years, many good floppies are now unreadable.

You definitely should try formatting a spare floppy in that drive, though, to see if it works.  You can't damage a floppy by trying to format it in a faulty drive (unless the drive head somehow crashes into the plastic surface of the media).  At worst, you won't be able to format the disc, or you'll have a disc that is only readable with that particular drive (if the heads have gone out of alignment).

If your drive is out of alignment, then it will format discs only it will be able to read.  But you can always re-format them when you get a repaired/new drive.  Formatting is not permanent.

But how are you going to get into the OS in order to format the disks if you can't even boot Workbench?

[Blinx123]

Frankly, I think it's the drive.

David (davideo) told me I should check again, perhaps remove and push in the disk a few times more and that's basically when the following happened.

1. The disk gets read a little while longer than before (like 8 seconds rather than 3 or less).
2. A message box pops up, saying there is an error on sector block 002.
3. (after I removed the disk and pushed 'retry' again) the drive starts acting up and begins to sound like a rattle snake.
4. (after I turned it off and back on) everything is back to normal and I get the "Not a valid DOS disk" error again.

I hope I didn't screw up a perfectly fine disk now.

I plan on asking my former boss for an HD floppy drive I could modify later today. It sucks, but I'll basically have to cut open the seal on my Amiga and see if there's something wrong inside and if I can't find anything, I'll have hook up that modified HD drive.

[Ral-Clan]

Before you go hacking apart your A1200, wouldn't it be prudent to get a good known working disk and check if it has problems in your A1200?

That would be a lot less work and eliminate the chance of accidentally damaging your A1200.

You never said where you got those Workbench disks that are failing.  Where did you get this A1200?  Is it one of Petro's?  Were the Workbench disks known to be working before you tried them?

As I said, 15 year old Workbench disks, even if never used, are not likely to be working after all this time.

[Blinx123]

Before you go hacking apart your A1200, wouldn't it be prudent to get a good known working disk and check if it has problems in your A1200?


That would be a lot less work and eliminate the chance of accidentally damaging your A1200.

Sure. But isn't it rather telling already that those disks would all be accessed for less than 5 seconds? Even if the floppies were faulty, shouldn't it still take the drive a lot longer?

You never said where you got those Workbench disks that are failing.  Where did you get this A1200?  Is it one of Petro's?  Where the Workbench disks known to be working before you tried them?

Yea. It's one of Petros and the disks were included. Everything was still sealed when I received it.

As I said, 15 year old Workbench disks, even if never used, are not likely to be working after all this time.

That's kinda sad.
I thought floppies were a bit more durable.

I guess that means most of my games will not work either anymore.
What a shame.

[Ral-Clan]

I don't think 5 seconds is unusual for it to fail, especially if the boot block is damaged.

No, floppies are not durable media.  Magnetic media is not the greatest for long term storage of digital data.  Especially floppies.

Maybe some types of streaming tape drives are good for long term archival storage (like DDS tapes), but not 3.5" floppies.

It *could* be your drive has failed, but I would try the weakest link first - and that would be the floppy disks themselves.

Didn't the Magic Pack you received come with *any* other bootable disks you could try?

[Blinx123]

I don't think 5 seconds is unusual for it to fail, especially if the boot block is damaged.

No, floppies are not durable media.  Magnetic media is not the greatest for long term storage of digital data.  Especially floppies.

Maybe some types of streaming tape drives are good for long term archival storage (like DDS tapes), but not 3.5" floppies.

It *could* be your drive has failed, but I would try the weakest link first - and that would be the floppy disks themselves.

Didn't the Magic Pack you received come with *any* other bootable disks you could try?

Yes. There were some other disks in there as well, but I really don't want to risk screwing them up, in case it's the drive that's failing.

Is there no other way to check whether the floppies are broken or not? Weren't there two or three Windows tools that made it possible to read Amiga floppy disks without the need of a catweasel?

Furthermore, if the workbench disks turn out to be the culprit, is there any way to install Amiga OS 3.1 without the need of a floppy drive? I don't want to spend money on another set of WB disks. Especially if there's a fair chance these might turn out to be faulty as well.

EDIT: Found the tool I was thinking about. It's called adfread. I'll still need an Amiga floppy drive for it, of course.

[spirantho]

I made a little YouTube video a little while back called "how to clean floppy disks". Might be worth a try.

Many apparently bad disks actually are just dirty and work fine when you've removed the dirt. Be aware though that if they do start working, make a backup immediately! It may have been oxidisation that broke the disk so you may have lost some of the surface.

[Ral-Clan]

Yes. There were some other disks in there as well, but I really don't want to risk screwing them up, in case it's the drive that's failing.

A failing drive is not very likely to screw up a floppy disk unless it does some sort of write command to the disk (which is not the case when an Amiga boots).  The only reason it would "screw up" a disk is if the drive head was rubbing against the disk surface - which is not likely to happen.  I would just try it - seriously you don't have much to lose and even if a disk was damaged you can easily find the .adf for that bundled software and re-write them to new disks when you get the system working eventually.

Is there no other way to check whether the floppies are broken or not? Weren't there two or three Windows tools that made it possible to read Amiga floppy disks without the need of a catweasel? EDIT: Found the tool I was thinking about. It's called adfread. I'll still need an Amiga floppy drive for it, of course.

I think you are confused.  This tool requires two regular PC floppy drives, not Amiga drives.  You must have two floppy drives installed in your PC.

You must also have a PC motherboard that supports two floppy drives in the BIOS - many newer motherboards do not support this "legacy" feature.  Do you have an old 486, Pentium I or II hanging around to do this with?

Other than that the ONLY way to read an Amiga disk in a PC is with a CatWeasel or another hardware device like a Kryoflux that reads foreign disk formats on the PC.

The only other ways to boot into Workbench are with a hard drive or CD/DVD drive.  There are PCMIA and SD card solutions for the A1200, but I'm not sure if you can boot from them.  Another option would be to get a Subway or other USB interface for the A1200, but again I'm not sure if it's bootable.