anybody still have a working BBC computer ?

The Sydex utilities off Simtel although ancient are of about the right vintage to stand a chance of reading one on a suitably equipped PC.

You might be able to image the physical disk with that or Omniflop.

Try

formatting link

But use exotic FD drivers with caution and at your own risk.

Reply to
Martin Brown
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In article , Bob Eager writes

The way I did it years ago to transfer a membership database was to print out the records to a parallel/serial convertor, the other end of which was connected to the RS232 port of the PC. I could then upload the records into an MS Works database. Blank field separators had to be chosen carefully.

Reply to
bert

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

But if you reformat them you will lose the data will you not?

Reply to
bert

If you have a drive that will read them, then the answer is to open them at a low level in binary and suck out the contents of all the blocks on the disc.

Then, at your leisure, you can decode the disc structure and recover what you want.

Reply to
gareth

But do many PCs have floppies these days?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Oh indeed.

Point I was making was that an ADFS formatted floppy with text files won't read on a PC.

A RPC will read both ADFS and DOS formatted floppies.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I've got one right next to me. Mind, it is a 10yo XP machine... Can't imagine it'd read a Beeb-formatted disk, though. If there's anything readable on it after several decades.

Reply to
Adrian

That does presuppose that the sector numbers and sector sizes are what the low level driver expects. Some floppues can be formatted (for example) with 4kB sectors.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I have a USB one and a drive in the yamaha.

Reply to
dennis

I've just checked some pretty ancient floppies on this RPC and they still work. But they have been stored in a pukka box for floppies.

I'm trying to remember why Acorn used ADFS for their floppies when they will read/write DOS too - even with pure Acorn file formats on them. I think it gives more usable space.

A 1.44Mb DOS formatted disc will re-format to 1.6Mb ADFS.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

Nonsense.

formatting link

I've used this extensively, works perfectly.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

Long filenames and extended attributes.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

But why would I pay for software I'd never use?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

Jeez.

You said, quote, "an ADFS formatted floppy with text files won't read on a PC." I posted a link to software that allows this, disproving what you said.

And this isn't for your benefit, it's for anyone in a similar situation, wanting to access files on BBC micro discs in a PC.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

won't know unless I have a drive to put it in :-)

Although 3.5" fdd is standard the BBC had its own Disk system ... not compatible with a pc

Reply to
rick

I'll do that

Reply to
rick

Dave ... ref your reply below

Would you be willing to give it a go if I sent you the disk ? Tech site states ADFS was used on Master Compact

If so ping me a PM

Rick

Reply to
rick

I have a RISC PC and the floppy drive still works. Just tried.

email me directly

Reply to
Charles Hope

the total files would be very small ... could simply email them to me ... couple of hundred kb at most

Reply to
rick

No problem, then.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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