ADFread 1.0 - Page 2

pidarr · 19 September 2006, 12:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

But note that most newer chipsets don't have B-floppy drive support.

Argh!!!
This is my hardware...
Do you know if the 2nd floppy is supported?

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Thanks for the help!

Zetr0 · 19 September 2006, 12:10

It should do,but as Toni says the only way to activate a 2nd floppy is to go into the BIOS and change the settings there.... generally its on the standard CMOS settings (or similary named first page where you would set time/date).

If you are a little worried about changing settings in your BIOS have some one do it for you

better to be safe than without a PC that boots and sorry..

Toni Wilen · 19 September 2006, 12:18

NForce 2 and newer unfortunately don't have support for 2 drives

Doc Mindie · 19 September 2006, 12:32

Stupid question....

If the Bios says I can have two floppies, does that mean there's support for two floppies? I have a VIA something something chipset.... can't remember from the top of me head, it's benn 18 months since I got this MB

However, it says "KT4A-V! on the mainboard some where... which I believe is the MSI-modelnumber...... I'll have a look

Ignore, this is from my Mainboard description:

- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes

pidarr · 19 September 2006, 13:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

NForce 2 and newer unfortunately don't have support for 2 drives

So is there no way for me to use adfread?

thomas · 20 September 2006, 10:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

NForce 2 and newer unfortunately don't have support for 2 drives

I've got a GA-K8NF-9-RH motherboard with nForce4 chipset. It supports two floppy drives and runs ADFRead just fine.

Toni Wilen · 20 September 2006, 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomas

I've got a GA-K8NF-9-RH motherboard with nForce4 chipset. It supports two floppy drives and runs ADFRead just fine.

Interesting. I have Asus A8N SLI Deluxe (NF4 based) and it does not have B-drive option in bios (and neither does my old Asus NForce2)

Hmm.. maybe NForce4 really have hardware support for 2 drives but bios never enables it.

thomas · 20 September 2006, 11:08

Although my BIOS shows floppy options by default, there are some other options which are only displayed if I press Ctrl-F1. Perhaps your BIOS hides floppy options until you press some key combination ?

Toni Wilen · 20 September 2006, 11:13

I checked your MB specs and it has separate multi-io chip (ITE IT8712) that is also used for floppy. My MB does not have it. Apparently Gigabyte wasn't happy with NF4's io-support and used something with more features.

20 September 2006, 11:36

Most of the boards using VIA chipsets that I've tried still seem to support 2 drives, and it has been mainly the Intel and nForce boards that are limited to 1. It's good to hear that the newer nForce boards could be fine again too.

My Intel D875PBZ only supports 1 drive, and some newer Intel boards I checked also only mention "a single floppy drive" in their online manuals. So there's probably not much hope for those in the future.

Checking the BIOS is the best indicator of whether 2 drives are supported. BIOSes that list only A: are normally using a cut-down floppy controller that doesn't have B: physically connected, so there's no way to use it for adfread.

Si

nnever2000 · 25 October 2006, 09:29

Hi all,
I setup an old pentium II with two floppy 3,5; then I installed the necessary software and then I dumped severall amiga disk. Anyway for all track and all disks the program had 9 read errors for each track so I obtained only bad adf.

May be the problem is the 3,5 drive?

On the Disk2FDI site I found these compatibility list; my drive is none of them

------------------------------------

Known 3.5" floppy disk drives with a real index signal (good):
- Citizen
- OSDA-20E-U
- Hewlett Packard
- D2035-60121
- Mitsumi
- MF355F-3250MG
- Panasonic (Matsushita)
- JU-257A606P
- Samsung
- SFD-321B
- Sony
- MPF520-1
- MPF920-E
- Toshiba
- ND-356T-A

Known 3.5" floppy disk drives with a fake index signal (bad):
- Alps Electric co., ltd.
- Mitsumi
- D359M3
- D359M3D
- D359T6
- Nec
- FD1231H

29 January 2007, 22:46

Recently, I downloaded a floppy drive emulator on http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#top .
So now I can emulate a b-drive in ram. This doesn't seem to work, but can this be a solution for people with only one drive (after some tweaking)... ?

Toni Wilen · 30 January 2007, 09:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by intens

Recently, I downloaded a floppy drive emulator on http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#top .
So now I can emulate a b-drive in ram. This doesn't seem to work, but can this be a solution for people with only one drive (after some tweaking)... ?

2-drive trick requires 2 physical standard floppy drives connected to same standard PC floppy controller.

05 February 2007, 06:01

Hi, I just found this website and was looking through my bios config and I have support for a legacy B: drive but there are several options. Do I need the B: drive to be set at 720K capacity (that makes sense since there were hardly 1.44mb floppies at the time). Thanks.

05 February 2007, 09:18

B: can be set to anything you like in the BIOS - I think I remember testing that even "None" works. As long as it's present in the BIOS, the circuitry is available for use by the driver, and the driver will configure it with any settings it needs.

It might still be worth setting it to 1.44M, so it's available for use by other things I suppose.

05 February 2007, 22:36

thanks, this will be great to get my old AdPro software working with winuae....

19 February 2007, 23:29

Is there any hope for this software to work with disks formatted using diskspare.device ?

20 February 2007, 10:24

I don't know much about diskspare.device, other than what I've just Googled. It sounds like it's just a slightly tighter packed format to squeeze even more data on each track?

As long as it's still double-density, written as a single bitstream, doesn't include any copy protection tricks, and the sector numbers are known, then it should be possible to support it. ADFRead assembles a complete track from fragments read in multiple passes, so I guess it should work much the same.

Might be safer to wait for Toni to confirm it though

Toni Wilen · 20 February 2007, 10:37

It should be possible but it depends if it has multiple sectors or single huge sector per track (which would make fragment combination phase very difficult and error prone)

Need to do some testing first, documentation does not appear to have any format specification..

21 February 2007, 02:30

Thanks for the replies (and all the good work!), chaps.
It appears that diskspare.device uses 12 blocks per track (rather than 11?) and, optionally, tracks beyond 79. I'm sure I had better documentation for it, back in the day, in which the trick was more fully explained - from an earlier version probably "backed up" on a diskspare floppy!
I'm trying to test things myself, but I'm currently having trouble getting ADFRead to work with regular FFS floppies.
I suspect one of my floppy drives might be at fault - I'll do a swap later.
I can say that disk2FDI failed in all of my attempts with diskspare. Hmmm... maybe I should just acquire a working Amiga!

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19 September 2006, 12:10	#22
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	It should do,but as Toni says the only way to activate a 2nd floppy is to go into the BIOS and change the settings there.... generally its on the standard CMOS settings (or similary named first page where you would set time/date). If you are a little worried about changing settings in your BIOS have some one do it for you better to be safe than without a PC that boots and sorry..

19 September 2006, 12:18	#23
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,502	NForce 2 and newer unfortunately don't have support for 2 drives

19 September 2006, 12:32	#24
Doc Mindie In deep Trouble Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Manchester, Made in Norway Age: 51 Posts: 841	Stupid question.... If the Bios says I can have two floppies, does that mean there's support for two floppies? I have a VIA something something chipset.... can't remember from the top of me head, it's benn 18 months since I got this MB However, it says "KT4A-V! on the mainboard some where... which I believe is the MSI-modelnumber...... I'll have a look Ignore, this is from my Mainboard description: - 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes

20 September 2006, 11:08	#28
thomas Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 6,985	Although my BIOS shows floppy options by default, there are some other options which are only displayed if I press Ctrl-F1. Perhaps your BIOS hides floppy options until you press some key combination ?

20 September 2006, 11:13	#29
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,502	I checked your MB specs and it has separate multi-io chip (ITE IT8712) that is also used for floppy. My MB does not have it. Apparently Gigabyte wasn't happy with NF4's io-support and used something with more features.

20 September 2006, 11:36	#30
obo Posts: n/a	Most of the boards using VIA chipsets that I've tried still seem to support 2 drives, and it has been mainly the Intel and nForce boards that are limited to 1. It's good to hear that the newer nForce boards could be fine again too. My Intel D875PBZ only supports 1 drive, and some newer Intel boards I checked also only mention "a single floppy drive" in their online manuals. So there's probably not much hope for those in the future. Checking the BIOS is the best indicator of whether 2 drives are supported. BIOSes that list only A: are normally using a cut-down floppy controller that doesn't have B: physically connected, so there's no way to use it for adfread. Si

25 October 2006, 09:29	#31
nnever2000 Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: italy Posts: 138	Hi all, I setup an old pentium II with two floppy 3,5; then I installed the necessary software and then I dumped severall amiga disk. Anyway for all track and all disks the program had 9 read errors for each track so I obtained only bad adf. May be the problem is the 3,5 drive? On the Disk2FDI site I found these compatibility list; my drive is none of them ------------------------------------ Known 3.5" floppy disk drives with a real index signal (good): - Citizen - OSDA-20E-U - Hewlett Packard - D2035-60121 - Mitsumi - MF355F-3250MG - Panasonic (Matsushita) - JU-257A606P - Samsung - SFD-321B - Sony - MPF520-1 - MPF920-E - Toshiba - ND-356T-A Known 3.5" floppy disk drives with a fake index signal (bad): - Alps Electric co., ltd. - Mitsumi - D359M3 - D359M3D - D359T6 - Nec - FD1231H

29 January 2007, 22:46	#32
intens Posts: n/a	Recently, I downloaded a floppy drive emulator on http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#top . So now I can emulate a b-drive in ram. This doesn't seem to work, but can this be a solution for people with only one drive (after some tweaking)... ?

05 February 2007, 06:01	#34
GoldStar611 Posts: n/a	Hi, I just found this website and was looking through my bios config and I have support for a legacy B: drive but there are several options. Do I need the B: drive to be set at 720K capacity (that makes sense since there were hardly 1.44mb floppies at the time). Thanks.

05 February 2007, 09:18	#35
obo Posts: n/a	B: can be set to anything you like in the BIOS - I think I remember testing that even "None" works. As long as it's present in the BIOS, the circuitry is available for use by the driver, and the driver will configure it with any settings it needs. It might still be worth setting it to 1.44M, so it's available for use by other things I suppose.

05 February 2007, 22:36	#36
GoldStar611 Posts: n/a	thanks, this will be great to get my old AdPro software working with winuae....

19 February 2007, 23:29	#37
davwood Posts: n/a	Is there any hope for this software to work with disks formatted using diskspare.device ?

20 February 2007, 10:24	#38
obo Posts: n/a	I don't know much about diskspare.device, other than what I've just Googled. It sounds like it's just a slightly tighter packed format to squeeze even more data on each track? As long as it's still double-density, written as a single bitstream, doesn't include any copy protection tricks, and the sector numbers are known, then it should be possible to support it. ADFRead assembles a complete track from fragments read in multiple passes, so I guess it should work much the same. Might be safer to wait for Toni to confirm it though

20 February 2007, 10:37	#39
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,502	It should be possible but it depends if it has multiple sectors or single huge sector per track (which would make fragment combination phase very difficult and error prone) Need to do some testing first, documentation does not appear to have any format specification..

21 February 2007, 02:30	#40
davwood Posts: n/a	Thanks for the replies (and all the good work!), chaps. It appears that diskspare.device uses 12 blocks per track (rather than 11?) and, optionally, tracks beyond 79. I'm sure I had better documentation for it, back in the day, in which the trick was more fully explained - from an earlier version probably "backed up" on a diskspare floppy! I'm trying to test things myself, but I'm currently having trouble getting ADFRead to work with regular FFS floppies. I suspect one of my floppy drives might be at fault - I'll do a swap later. I can say that disk2FDI failed in all of my attempts with diskspare. Hmmm... maybe I should just acquire a working Amiga!

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