RISC OS Magazine Floppy Disks

[RPCEmuUser]

I have approx 700 3 1/2 floppy disks, most of them are from magazines, but a few have commercial software, I would like to preserve all of these disks but not sure the best way to go about it. I bought a 3 1/2 floppy disk drive with or using a different method., USB lead. I use RISC OS 5.28 on my Raspberry Pi 8GB, I have tried connecting but have had no joy, is there a way that this can be done.

Thank you.

[flaxcottage]

The way I use involves a spare Windows XP computer system with a floppy disc interface built as part of the motherboard. The software OmniFlop will archive the RISCOS discs as ADL files, which are then renamed as ADF files to work with emulators.

Using a RISCOS 3.1 machine the discs can be copied into ZIP files and archived that way. The ZIP file should fit onto a single floppy disc for transfer to a PC using the USB floppy drive you have. The files can then be stored on a USB memory stick/DVD-R/hard drive/cloud space for preservation.

[RPCEmuUser]

The way I use involves a spare Windows XP computer system with a floppy disc interface built as part of the motherboard. The software OmniFlop will archive the RISCOS discs as ADL files, which are then renamed as ADF files to work with emulators.

Using a RISCOS 3.1 machine the discs can be copied into ZIP files and archived that way. The ZIP file should fit onto a single floppy disc for transfer to a PC using the USB floppy drive you have. The files can then be stored on a USB memory stick/DVD-R/hard drive/cloud space for preservation.

John,

One issue that I have is I don't have a spare Windows XP computer system with a floppy disc interface built on the motherboard, but have found a Windows XP with the following motherboard built inside.

Asus P5S800-VM-GB-S Motherboard

Not sure if this will do but looking at some of the photos it does have a 3 1/2 floppy drive built in the tower, not sure if this will do or not.

I'm currently running RISC OS 5.28 on my Raspberry Pi 4, once in RISC OS I can run the emulater that runs RISC OS 3.1

Do you run the OmniFlop application on Windows XP.

[flaxcottage]

That motherboard does have an on-board floppy connector and so should work. Older laptops with a built in floppy drive can also be used. I use a Compaq evo N110.

OmniFlop is run on the XP PC. You won't need a network connection as it will have USB connectivity for the images and for installing OmniFlop. OmniFlop will ONLY work with an on-board FDC and not the USB one.

[danielj]

A Greaseweazle with an old HD PC floppy attached to it will image pretty any 3.5" disk you care to throw at it irrespective of format and protection (YMMV with Mac 800k disks). You can run it from a Pi running Linux or a PC running linux or windows. Or a mac.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125781609791 - direct from the designer.

Wiki here:
https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki

[flaxcottage]

Hah! I have a GreaseWeazel and had it for ages but never got around to using it. I also have all the hardware needed to get it working.

I'm really retro, , and stick to what I know works for me.

I'm such a dinosaur that I am loading HFE files on my GOTEK drive, hacking the protection and saving them as SSD files. With lots of GOTEKs about in the community now I'm wondering why I bother. One reason though is that BeebEm (the version I have at the moment) does not load HFE files, which means that I cannot get screen shots of the working titles to put on my website. Also SSD files are sooo simple to manipulate. I have written loaders to extract files to my RISCOS 3.x machines, the Pi and into BBCB4W on my PC.