anybody still have a working BBC computer ?

[rick]

I have a single 3.5" FD that was authored on a BBC compact.

It contains a few text files I would like to get off the disk ......... anybody have one of these pieces of history that still work?

[Cursitor Doom]

I don't think it's the hardware you need to worry about; it's more whether your floppy has retained data integrity since it was written.

[Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp]

I threw out my BBC collection some years back. The floppy is probably unreadable, but if you have a linux computer, you could probably find a means of getting the text from the disk.

DOS had a "dump" command or similar, that may be a way of dragging the data off. I suspect it may be a little intolerant of none DOS partitions though.

AB

[Bob Eager]

The problem is that it was probably formatted with 1kB sectors, or something like that.

[Fredxxx]

A quick google does suggest their are some pay-services that might get this data off for you.

is one.

This site might be useful, I am sure there are many others:

[Jim White]

Try asking (nicely) in comp.sys.acorn.misc

[John Mulrooney]

Rick, I'd suggest asking on comp.sys.acorn.misc where there are some helpful folk unless Dave (sound) Plowman reads this on this group

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

And cam.misc. Loads of ex acorn people in there many of whom are slf appointed IT museums.

Not sire I don't have access to one here also, or maybe its an Apple II

[Huge]

If all else fails, have a word with the Computing Museum at Bletchley Park. I gave them two ...

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , rick escribió:

You can read it using a PC with a floppy drive, there should be plenty of those knocking around (or borrow an USB floppy.)

Then use software from this page to retrieve the files:

[John Rumm]

This bunch also maintain a warehouse full of kit and let people use it:

[jgh]

I have Acorn computers with 3.5" drives that can most likely read your disk (A5000, Master, DFS, ADFS, HADFS, DOSFS - a Compact is likely to be ADFS). I could extract your data for postage. See my website for my email address.

jgh - mdfs.net/portfolio

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You could take that both ways. ;-)

If it's the normal ADFS, the floppy drive on my RPC certainly still works. Must admit to not knowing what a BBC compact is, though.

[spuorgelgoog]

An agreement to keep quiet about historic child abuse?

A soap opera from the early 1960s?

Or a "two-box" version of the BBC Micro with the power supply in the disc drive box. "No commercial software or utilities, others than those included on the Welcome disk were ever made available for the system."

Owain

[Brian-Gaff]

The issue is finding the right software to emulate the drive format I'd imagine. There used to be some dos software to do this back in the day. Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes indeed, I have lots of discs made on a Spectrum with various disc formats, and most seem to be still readable, but the issue seems to be that some more modern drives don't read them while others do.

Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Acorn floppies are usually formatted using a different FS to a PC. Called ADFS. But they can also be formatted for DOS and Atari, here on this RPC.

I'm not sure what other Acorn devices allowed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mmm. Its also a bit of gamble on early devices as to whether or not games were played to put ofd numbers of tracks and sectors on.

If not, then you should be able to dd the raw device and pick over the data and recreate the filing system from that if you care to, but if the drive uses bits that even dd doesnt recognise, all bets are off..

[Bob Eager]

In BSD at least, you can discover the sector numbers even if they are strange ones. Can't use dd, but a simple program could get the sectors off.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You don't seem to have come back to this, but I'd certainly be willing to transfer it to a CD or whatever, if my RPC can read it.

Contact me by email - address at the bottom of the post and note the spam trap.