Kryoflux

[Yulquen74]

Hi,

If I understand correctly, this is a special floppy controller that can be used to salvage old floppy disks due to more sophisticated reading.

If my goal were to save some old disks, using adf as end format,
what would I need and how would I do it in terms of software and hardware?
It would be most conveniant to use the PC for this job.

Thanks in advance for feedback.

[Arnie]

On the hardware side you would need;

PC floppy drive
34 pin floppy cable
floppy power cable
usb a to B cable
Kryoflux

On the sofware side you use the Kryoflux software which can read Dos and Ndos disks.

Only Dos disks can be saved to ADF, for NDos (and also dos) disks you can save as Stream, Raw or IPF.

[Yulquen74]

Ok,

while the kryoflux software is reading a disk, will it report errors and give you option to retry bad tracks?

and speaking dos disks, does that apply for both ofs and ffs?

If a disk image is saved as those other formats, is it possible to convert them to adf at a later stage with some other software?

[Jope]

NDOS saves as ADF just fine. It's the disks with protection that are not much use as adf. :-)

ADF can be OFS and FFS. It is also possible to convert raw to something else with the dtc tool that is used to read the images.

[Arnie]

You can set the amount of retries in the settings box. If after all retries are used and the track still can't be read then it reports it as bad.

Both OFS and FFS.

You could probably convert them to extended adf's (don't ask me how) but winUAE reads RAW and IPf.

[Yulquen74]

Ok,

thanks again everyone, have ordered a kryoflux board.

[prowler]

You won't regret it!

[Yulquen74]

Ok,

received my kit today, and have got it working.

Testing first with some good disks, no problem.

Then testing a disk with errors.

Trying to copy it with Kryoflux, it was unable to copy 15 of the tracks on the upper side of the disk. Testing the same disk with x-copy on my A500+, only 6 tracks failed to copy.

Tested another disk with damaged surface, Kryoflux gave up on 4 tracks, the A500 only 2.

I have connected the kryoflux to a NOS Sony MPF920 drive.

Using the Kryoflux java based GUI with default settings.

Using the power supply with the premium edition.

I know two disks is not representative, but can it be expected to salvage more in the long run, compared to regular copy tools on the Amiga, or can better results be obtained with other types of floppy disk drives?

What are your experience?

[Retroplay]

It really depends on the diskdrive you use, some read better than others and some write better than others.
I've had the best experience so far with an ALPS DF354H911C (84 tracks supported) drive.

You could try and clean the floppydisk before dumping it.
I've had great success using this method:
[ Show youtube player ]

Just be very gentle and don't press too hard with the cotton swabs.

[Yulquen74]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

It really depends on the diskdrive you use, some read better than others and some write better than others.
I've had the best experience so far with an ALPS DF354H911C (84 tracks supported) drive.

You could try and clean the floppydisk before dumping it.
I've had great success using this method:
[ Show youtube player ]

Just be very gentle and don't press too hard with the cotton swabs.

Thanks for your suggestion, I will perhaps pick up one of those drives on ebay.

Regarding the washing, I have actually done the exact thing with troubled disks several years ago, and as you I also found it to work very well!

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

It really depends on the diskdrive you use, some read better than others and some write better than others.
I've had the best experience so far with an ALPS DF354H911C (84 tracks supported) drive.

You could try and clean the floppydisk before dumping it.
I've had great success using this method:
[ Show youtube player ]

Just be very gentle and don't press too hard with the cotton swabs.

this method works very fine I used it since 1990 or so but I used alcohol to clean instead detergent
problem is ambient humidity creates fungus in the surface of the disk,
floppy disks must be stored on a 100 % sealed box otherwise the problem will return along the time

[IFW]

You should be aware that KryoFlux can report tracks as bad that are not normally reported to be bad by the majority of the copiers or tools.
KryoFlux does check illegal encoding, and makes integrity checks in the data as well as time domain. This way corrupt data (even if it passes a checksum check) is a lot less likely to pass as "good" - which can happen with a simple checksum check.

[Yulquen74]

Originally Posted by IFW

You should be aware that KryoFlux can report tracks as bad that are not normally reported to be bad by the majority of the copiers or tools.
KryoFlux does check illegal encoding, and makes integrity checks in the data as well as time domain. This way corrupt data (even if it passes a checksum check) is a lot less likely to pass as "good" - which can happen with a simple checksum check.

Thats nice to know!

Another issue:

When using the GUI, is it possible to read only a selected range of tracks over again and appending them to the existing adf, instead of deleting it and zero out the rest of the data?

[IFW]

Yes and no
Ideally, you should dump everything to stream files, especially since you can later convert them to any format you like - unlike an end-user format, where conversion is usually no longer possible.
Think of stream files as having say a lossless audio file, and you can convert it to any kind of lossy compression as long as you have the original samples.
So, if you have the stream files, you could simply redump the bad tracks in any range and replace the files corresponding to bad tracks with the new track dumps.
Then you can re-convert the stream files directly to ADF, and you will have a complete, error free ADF - if you are lucky enough to have read the disk completely error free eventually.

[Yulquen74]

Originally Posted by IFW

Yes and no
Ideally, you should dump everything to stream files, especially since you can later convert them to any format you like - unlike an end-user format, where conversion is usually no longer possible.
Think of stream files as having say a lossless audio file, and you can convert it to any kind of lossy compression as long as you have the original samples.
So, if you have the stream files, you could simply redump the bad tracks in any range and replace the files corresponding to bad tracks with the new track dumps.
Then you can re-convert the stream files directly to ADF, and you will have a complete, error free ADF - if you are lucky enough to have read the disk completely error free eventually.

That worked fine, thanks!

Anyway, put the unit in an unused alu cabinet I had to avoid accidents with the board. I used metal spacers for floppy and the board itself to fasten it:

http://s1314.photobucket.com/user/y_...2665b.jpg.html

http://i1314.photobucket.com/albums/...psecf569f1.jpg

http://i1314.photobucket.com/albums/...psc436cc1b.jpg

[IFW]

Cool

[Jope]

Nice! I put two of them in an external SCSI box, one (the olimex proto board) for 3.5" and one (a production kf) for 5.25". I should poke around to see how I can temporarily disable the track 0 sensor hack in my 5.25" mechanism so I could potentially connect both drives at the same time to only one kryoflux.

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Only Dos disks can be saved to ADF, for NDos (and also dos) disks you can save as Stream, Raw or IPF.

Kryoflux can't yet 'save' as IPF.