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Retrieving Data From Old Amstrad Floppies?
Jeppe Utzon writes "Back in 1987, when I was a teenager in high school still, I spent most evenings, nights and weekends writing small programs in BASIC on my Amstrad CPC 6128. Some of these programs were simple games, some drew graphics, some could help me with math or train me in French — and most were utterly pointless. But I never had as much satisfying fun as when writing those programs — even if no one in my family understood any of it when I proudly displayed the fruits of three sleepless nights of labor. Now, 20 years later, I still have a sealed pack of about 15 disks with all my work on them (along with a few of my favorite games) and I was wondering if it was possible to get the data out somehow so that I could run it in emulation on my Mac. I know of the emulators, but have no clue what would be needed to extract the data — or if it is even extractable after all these years. I realize the chances of the data still being intact are quite low, but I'd like to give it a shot. So if anyone has any pointers it would be greatly appreciated."
A large hurdle will be finding a drive to read the Amstrad disks at all.
I used disk2fdi for this. You can get this at: http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi
It should be trivially easy to do, given a short BASIC program and five minutes on ebay.
Just search ebay for an Amstrad CPC6128 or a Sinclair Spectrum +3 or an Amstrad PCW. There are still plenty of them around. (I have a Spectrum +3 with a working 3 inch Amstrad floppy drive as it happens, the floppy drive is quite handy for restoring the firmware on the Spectrum ethernet card I'm developing if I blow some non-functional code onto the flash ROM and can't reprogram it any more over ethernet). It would be best to get a CPC6128 - if you get a Spectrum +3 or a PCW you may have to write some low-level software to read CPC formatted discs.
The CPC, if I remember right, has an RS232 port. Write a short BASIC program to send your data to a PC via RS232.
Incidentally, the most common fault on the 3 inch Amstrad drives is a broken belt - you can buy new ones from rwap software: http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/ - while this firm caters for the Spectrum, since the later models were built by Amstrad with the 3in drive, they carry parts for 3in drives.
The other good news is most floppies seem to hold up well - while the 3in discs don't seem to do as well as 5.25 in discs (I have only one faulty disc in many 20+ year old ones for my BBC micro, but rather more faulty 3in discs - all pre-recorded game discs) - so I suspect your discs will all read fine.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You can start here...
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/amstrad/
There are a number of companies that do media conversion. They can read old floppies, 9-track tapes, tape cartridges and other obsolete media.
Try:
http://computer-convert.com/index.htm
http://www.vintagetech.com/?section=conversion (they also do 7-track tape, paper tape and punch cards!)
Google: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=media+conversion+floppy+tape+&src=IE-SearchBox
However, you may find looking on ebay is cheaper and more fun.
Yep, once you find one you are going to need to transfer it onto a PC. I never could find a drive, so I gave up, but here are some links that will help with the task.
This link http://www.fvempel.nl/3pc.html has some good details on how to splice it onto a PC floppy cable. There are also loads of good links on his page for extracting the data.
The guys on http://www.cpczone.net/ were really helpful.
Good luck, you will need it!
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
http://www.pcwking1.netfirms.com/disc-conversions.html
In my case we had an Amstrad PCW8256 in full working order, so that covered reading the disks. The Locolink software is hard to come by but I picked up a copy on E-Bay. It's designed for transferring and converting Locoscript files but will transfer other files as well just fine. It only works with Window 98 on the PC side though.
If you don't have an actual working Amstrad then your best bet is probably finding a hacked-up 3" drive that you can connect to a PC. You might be more likely to be able to purchase the whole computer.
If you're in the UK there are services that will transfer the files for you for 10GBP a disk. Here's a list of them. In the US, try here.
Good luck!
Especially since you can find the whole Amstrad 6128 for 20 Euros.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
But, the IBM-compatible floppy controller might not be able to handle these Amstrad disks.
If that's a problem, get one of these controllers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CatWeasel. Unless they have a driver already, you'll need to know how to write a program to decode data, bit by bit, but these controllers will read and write nearly anything. I have a MK3, and I was able to get it to read the data on old Ohio Scientific disks.
Now if I could just find a working 8" disk drive...
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
I looked into this a while ago, I have a few CF2 3" disks, and would love to read what I wrote when I was 14.
I found this company that offers conversions @ £5 a disk.
This isn't the only company, but a google will find the others.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Using Google, I fouund the solution. It appears that this guy can do the conversion for you and return your data in hours. Cost would not be prohibitive and would support the Amstrad addiction.
He seems to have a pretty good handle on all the conversion problems, too. His page is a fun read just for that.
I just went and got a diskette hand-labeled "Windows for Workgroups 3.11, #1". Windows 95 replaced WFW, so the diskette is 14 years old. It is completely readable. Need evidence? Quote from SETUP.TXT:
/v /r /f. It found 512 bytes in a bad sector in one file, and said it fixed the problem. All other files were perfect.
"AT&T(R) Safari Computer
------
If you have an AT&T Safari computer, you cannot maintain two versions of Windows on your system. You must upgrade over your previous version of Windows, if you have one. If you set up Windows for Workgroups version 3.11 in its own directory, it will not use the special drivers required to run on the computer."
You said, "The plastic carrier has become brittle..." That kind of plastic is a hazard to the environment, because it doesn't break down.
"... the magnetic media has flaked off..." The substrate is Mylar. The glue is intensely adherent.
' "the bits on the media itself have "floated" ' Not so, I think I can install Windows for Workgroups again any time I like.
I ran chkdsk a: