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Retrieving Data From Old Amstrad Floppies?

Posted by timothy on from the but-I-thought-you-said-it-was-obscure dept.

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.

4 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Agreed on finding a drive by Chas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "I have a 5 1/4 floppy drive and some disks set aside for the exact same reason.....someday I'll want that info and then I'll be all set."

    If bit-rot doesn't do you in first.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  2. Classic Computing mailing list by Digi-John · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just sign up for one of these (I suggest cctalk) and ask around. Maybe somebody can convert them for you, maybe somebody else has an entire Amstrad system that they'll let you have cheap.

    --
    Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
  3. Simplest way... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Try emailing the people who write those emulators you mention.

    --
    No sig today...
  4. Re:Agreed on finding a drive by JayAEU · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wasn't life more simple before the days of ATA? No, it definitely wasn't! Simple in terms of available technology, yes. Simple in terms of easily getting hardware to work, no!

    Have you ever tried getting a CD-ROM drive to work using a SB16 card's interface along with the crappy DOS drivers from Creative? Ever had fun trying to find an IRQ to use for a new ISA-card controller and finding that none was available? Or how about trying to have more than one harddisk in one computer, it was a nightmare with MFM (or RLL even).

    Thank god we have IDE/ATA!