anybody still have a working BBC computer ?

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.

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

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

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.

But do many PCs have floppies these days?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

Nonsense.

I've used this extensively, works perfectly.

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

Long filenames and extended attributes.

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

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.

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

I'll do that

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

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

email me directly

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

No problem, then.