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On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 09:12 PM, Bob Stewart wrote:

?

If you have access to Linux, have you tried using "dd" to make an image, and then using dd put the image on a new disk?

In my experience (from UNIX on), the dd command will copy anything except master diskettes which have a laser-shot hole in the medium for copy protection. ?Also slower (smaller chunks) seems more reliable.

Larry
AC9OX

On 6/3/21 9:12 PM, Bob Stewart wrote:

"The "A" version uses a 5.25" diskette drive. The boot diskette is hard
sector
with a weird format that I've not been able to copy."

I've renamed this to hopefully avoid threadjacking.

If you have access to Linux, have you tried using "dd" to make an image,
and then using dd put the image on a new disk?

There's virtually no chance of this working. This will only work if
the disk is written in one of the few disk formats that are standard on
PCs, which, as I understand it, the 4145A's is not.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 09:58 PM, Bob Stewart wrote:

" dd" doesn't care about disk formats.?

Same in my experience. ?I have copied DOS discs, UNIX disks, ATARI discs, etc. ?It is is like doing a bit copy on a HD, “1 or 0”

Larry
AC9OX

No.

Strictly speaking, you're correct, "dd" itself doesn't care about disk
formats. However, the underlying device driver does, and the floppy
disk controller chip underneath that does.

The Linux fdd driver assumes a certain sector size, number of sectors
per track, number of tracks per cylinder, and number of cylinders per
disk. In the era in which the 4145A was designed, there were no
industry standards for those parameters for 5.25" disks.

Unless it is one of the standard "PC" formats, no, it will not work.
Save yourself a headache and trust me on this; I work with dozens of
different disk formats all the time in my work with the museum. I have
been on this road up, down, and sideways, and have a full section of my
lab dedicated to media recovery from various types of disks and tapes.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

On 6/3/21 10:04 PM, Larry McElhiney via groups.io wrote:

" dd" doesn't care about disk formats.?

Same in my experience. ?I have copied DOS discs, UNIX disks, ATARI
discs, etc. ?It is is like doing a bit copy on a HD, “1 or 0”

...except what is meant by "1" or "0" when you're encoding bits in
different types of flux transmissions? Are you aware of, for example,
FM, MFM, and GCR?

If what you're saying were true, there would be no need for
specialized software like Teledisk and ImageDisk. And the world has
depended on those programs for decades for this reason.

In short, you got lucky.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

On 6/3/21 10:10 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

No.

Strictly speaking, you're correct, "dd" itself doesn't care about disk
formats. However, the underlying device driver does, and the floppy
disk controller chip underneath that does.

The Linux fdd driver assumes a certain sector size, number of sectors
per track, number of tracks per cylinder, and number of cylinders per
disk. In the era in which the 4145A was designed, there were no
industry standards for those parameters for 5.25" disks.

[replying to my own email, man I must be tired]

I neglected to insert a paragraph regarding on-disk physical formats.
As I mentioned earlier, FM, MFM, and GCR encoding for bit
representation. Then there's hard sectoring vs. soft.

In other words: "nope".

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

No. Why? Because I actually know exactly how magnetic data
recording, floppy disks, floppy disk controllers, floppy controller
device drivers, and "dd" work.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

On 6/3/21 10:28 PM, Bob Stewart wrote:

I don't want to start a flame war here.? But, if you haven't tried it,
then you do not know.

I'm sorry, but yes, I do know.

dd reads sectors and writes sectors.? It doesn't care about the
formatting system on the disk.? It doesn't care about the arrangement of
sectors on a disk.? It reads sector 0 and then it writes sector 0 and
then it goes to sector 1, etc.?

Correct. Please don't try to explain to me how dd works; I'm quite
familiar with it. Once again, it is the device driver that cares about
the format, and underneath that the floppy disk controller chip.

Even in Linux, which is pretty flexible about disk formats, you have
to tell the driver the sector count and such. Look up "setfdprm". And
even that cannot magically make the floppy disk controller chip
magically understand an data encoding mechanism that it was not designed
to support.

Regarding the type of physical drive, that's a different story.? But, if
you take the floppy drive out of the equipment and attach it to the
Linux/Unix machine, it should be able to make a sector by sector copy of
any non-Master disk onto an image file, and then write that image file
to a new disk.

As to the question of why people pay for commercial software to do this
or that, you'd have to ask those people.? Most likely, they're stuck in
the Microsoft world and don't have any idea that there are better ways
to do things.? There are many, many thousands of people using dd every
day.? It has some risk to it because you can mess up the commands and
wind up destroying your data rather than reading it.? Of course, there
are write protector tabs for floppy disks.? But, care is everything.?
"dd" is probably the most dangerous tool on the Linux platform.? But is
also one of the most versatile.

Thanks, but once again, I'm quite familiar with dd.

I did not ask you why Teledisk and ImageDisk exist; I explained to you
why. TeleDisk and ImageDisk are not commercial software and they're not
for Windows. I am not some clueless Windows toyboy; I've never used
Windows. Your assumptions are incorrect.

Give it a try.? Nothing is wasted effort unless you've actually done it,
and done it correctly, and it still didn't work.

Actually, it would be wasted effort. I'm a busy guy; I am not going
to go waste my time because you don't understand a fundamental aspect of
how floppy disks work. I do this sort of work nearly every day.

Please go read up on this. Some search terms would be "teledisk",
"imagedisk", "mfm vs fm", and "hard sectored floppy".

I'm being as nice as I can be on this, but my patience has limits.
You don't know what you're talking about here. Please go do some
reading. I am happy to clear up any misconceptions that you may have
after that.

Or, if you insist, go find an Apple ][ diskette, put it in your PC,
and try to copy it using dd. It would be instructive to run a tail -f
on whatever your distributions primary syslog file is while you make the
attempt.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

Phew. I was just microwaving some popcorn to watch you try to teach Mr Mcguire how to suck eggs.

Imminent disaster averted.

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 01:12:21 +0000 (UTC)
"Bob Stewart" <bob@...> wrote:

"The "A" version uses a 5.25" diskette drive. The boot diskette is hard
sector with a weird format that I've not been able to copy."
I've renamed this to hopefully avoid threadjacking.

If you have access to Linux, have you tried using "dd" to make an image, and
then using dd put the image on a new disk?

Bob

I've used Linux as my primary O/S for MANY years (I helped the kernel folks
debug SMP).

There is NO WAY that "dd" can handle the 5.25" hard sector format FDDs. First
of all, the HP 4145A sector sizes vary from one part of the diskette to
another. Secondly, this is a hard sector diskette. So one needs to have a FDD
drive that supports a "hole" for every sector. Very few do.

KyroFlux "may" work with a hard sector FDD - but I haven't tried it. (KyroFlux
reads diskettes flux patterns as analog and saves the results in a file. One
then post-processes the analog to re-create/analyze/digitize same. Some
Computer Museums and some of we hobby folks use this methodology to copy
"weird" formatted disks. Caveat: The program to re-create/copy the analog is
specific to the media being used and I'm not aware of one for hard sector 5.25"
diskettes.)

Cheers,
Lyle
--

On Thursday, June 3, 2021, 7:56:04 PM CDT, Lyle Bickley
<lbickley@...> wrote:
On Thu, 03 Jun 2021 17:36:07 -0700
"Matt Huszagh" <huszaghmatt@...> wrote:

Hello,

In what ways is the 4145B an upgrade from the 4145A? The B seems to sell
for quite a bit more money. But, a quick look at the manual
specifications seems to indicate they have similar capabilities. I
understand the floppy drive was changed? Anything else? Are there
digital upgrades to the B unit?

The "A" version uses a 5.25" diskette drive. The boot diskette is hard sector
with a weird format that I've not been able to copy.

The "B" version uses a standard 3.5" soft sector diskette. It has a weird
format - but it's capable of being copied or created from a file by
Dunfield's "Imagedisk".

Other than the FDD, the "A" and "B" 4145's are virtually identical.

Is the contents of the boot diskette different on the B vs the A? I've
been able to find copies of the B version, but nothing for the A yet.

The contents (files), other than versioning, are nearly identical.

Cheers,
Lyle

--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West


"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

On 6/4/21 3:02 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:

There is NO WAY that "dd" can handle the 5.25" hard sector format FDDs. First
of all, the HP 4145A sector sizes vary from one part of the diskette to
another. Secondly, this is a hard sector diskette. So one needs to have a FDD
drive that supports a "hole" for every sector. Very few do.

KyroFlux "may" work with a hard sector FDD - but I haven't tried it. (KyroFlux
reads diskettes flux patterns as analog and saves the results in a file. One
then post-processes the analog to re-create/analyze/digitize same. Some
Computer Museums and some of we hobby folks use this methodology to copy
"weird" formatted disks. Caveat: The program to re-create/copy the analog is
specific to the media being used and I'm not aware of one for hard sector 5.25"
diskettes.)

I just went into the other room and checked again, just to be sure.
The boot disk in my 4145A, which is an HP-labeled original 4145A boot
disk, which actually boots, has ONE sector hole, therefore it is
soft-sectored.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

Hello Bob,

ImageDisk from Dave Dunfield is the greatest utility so far for the direct access to the disk controller HW. It turns your PC hardware in almost Amiga quality X-copy duplicator (which can even copy floppies w/o index pulse). ImageDisk encapsulates the low level access methods for the most popular FDCs encountered by the author (some new chipsets with the integrated FDC functionality have very limited capabilities and may not work well).

ImageDisk requires native DOS like OS? to operate (MS-DOS 6.22, PC-DOS, FREE-DOS) etc.

In my case I tried successfully this utility on DELL PRECISION 380 workstation (Pentium-D), which appeared to be the most recent HW from my collection working well with ImageDisk.

The latest version 1.18 includes the HW FDC test. If the test passes and your FDC HW is recognized and tested - you can copy any FM or MFM formatted disk (even with non-standard Gap intervals, even 8") on you PC computer.

Beware of these important things (it's not mentioned anywhere so far):
-? This utility intercepts the standard BIOS interrupt and installs its own handler. And it installs the FDC interrupt handler covering and replacing the whole controller low level routine regardless which FDD is for DOS and which one is for copying.
-? In order to get it to work (otherwise you will have DISK NOT READY error spontaneously), never boot your DOS OS from the floppy. Always do it either from the USB key or CDROM or RAMDISK (or the harddrive if you have one formatted just for that). I've spent one day to understand why even after passing the FDC test, I can't load the ImageDisk utility. It would fail in the middle of the initialization. Then I've realized that the way how the utility was written assumes, that the DOS (all: MS-DOS, PC-DOS, FREE-DOS etc) always loads not from floppy, but from somewhere else, hence all the drives are taken for copying (even you need only one drive for that).
- It's important to use the DD/DS floppy diskette instead of HD one, since the head write biasing current requirements are different (the head amplifier in you 4145A will clip distorting the read signal, it may work but with errors).

Few more observations:
?ImageDisk "analyzer" uility is useful to check the disk geometry (bytes/sector etc).
?If the copy is unsuccessful you try increasing the effective number of tracks by 1, 2 ,3 (for example 83 in total) (it was discussed somewhere)

Good luck!

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 15:15:10 -0400
"Dave McGuire" <mcguire@...> wrote:

On 6/4/21 3:02 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:

There is NO WAY that "dd" can handle the 5.25" hard sector format FDDs.
First of all, the HP 4145A sector sizes vary from one part of the diskette
to another. Secondly, this is a hard sector diskette. So one needs to have
a FDD drive that supports a "hole" for every sector. Very few do.

KyroFlux "may" work with a hard sector FDD - but I haven't tried it.
(KyroFlux reads diskettes flux patterns as analog and saves the results in
a file. One then post-processes the analog to re-create/analyze/digitize
same. Some Computer Museums and some of we hobby folks use this
methodology to copy "weird" formatted disks. Caveat: The program to
re-create/copy the analog is specific to the media being used and I'm not
aware of one for hard sector 5.25" diskettes.)

I just went into the other room and checked again, just to be sure.
The boot disk in my 4145A, which is an HP-labeled original 4145A boot
disk, which actually boots, has ONE sector hole, therefore it is
soft-sectored.

-Dave

Wow, that's excellent (and amazing - since mine is multi-sector!). In the soft
sector case, using a double density 5.25" FDD drive to create a copy is
"doable".

I'll have to give it a shot - I picked up the zip file 4145A image - and have
a linux/DOS (dual boot) system with both low/quad density and high density
5.25" diskettes. (This system is only used to make copies of "weird" FDDs).

Cheers,
Lyle
--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West


"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

My HP 4145A disks are soft sectored.

Others have copied the 4145A disks, and the images are
available on the internet.

-Chuck Harris


On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 12:02:46 -0700 "Lyle Bickley"
<lbickley@...> wrote:

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 01:12:21 +0000 (UTC)
"Bob Stewart" <bob@...> wrote:

"The "A" version uses a 5.25" diskette drive. The boot diskette is
hard sector with a weird format that I've not been able to copy."
I've renamed this to hopefully avoid threadjacking.

If you have access to Linux, have you tried using "dd" to make an
image, and then using dd put the image on a new disk?

Bob

I've used Linux as my primary O/S for MANY years (I helped the kernel
folks debug SMP).

There is NO WAY that "dd" can handle the 5.25" hard sector format
FDDs. First of all, the HP 4145A sector sizes vary from one part of
the diskette to another. Secondly, this is a hard sector diskette. So
one needs to have a FDD drive that supports a "hole" for every
sector. Very few do.

KyroFlux "may" work with a hard sector FDD - but I haven't tried it.
(KyroFlux reads diskettes flux patterns as analog and saves the
results in a file. One then post-processes the analog to
re-create/analyze/digitize same. Some Computer Museums and some of we
hobby folks use this methodology to copy "weird" formatted disks.
Caveat: The program to re-create/copy the analog is specific to the
media being used and I'm not aware of one for hard sector 5.25"
diskettes.)

Cheers,
Lyle
--

On Thursday, June 3, 2021, 7:56:04 PM CDT, Lyle Bickley
<lbickley@...> wrote:
On Thu, 03 Jun 2021 17:36:07 -0700
"Matt Huszagh" <huszaghmatt@...> wrote:

Hello,

In what ways is the 4145B an upgrade from the 4145A? The B seems
to sell for quite a bit more money. But, a quick look at the
manual specifications seems to indicate they have similar
capabilities. I understand the floppy drive was changed? Anything
else? Are there digital upgrades to the B unit?

The "A" version uses a 5.25" diskette drive. The boot diskette is
hard sector with a weird format that I've not been able to copy.

The "B" version uses a standard 3.5" soft sector diskette. It has a
weird format - but it's capable of being copied or created from a
file by Dunfield's "Imagedisk".

Other than the FDD, the "A" and "B" 4145's are virtually identical.

Is the contents of the boot diskette different on the B vs the A?
I've been able to find copies of the B version, but nothing for
the A yet.

The contents (files), other than versioning, are nearly identical.

Cheers,
Lyle

On 6/4/21 3:29 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:

I just went into the other room and checked again, just to be sure.
The boot disk in my 4145A, which is an HP-labeled original 4145A boot
disk, which actually boots, has ONE sector hole, therefore it is
soft-sectored.

Wow, that's excellent (and amazing - since mine is multi-sector!). In the soft
sector case, using a double density 5.25" FDD drive to create a copy is
"doable".

Uhh, waitaminute. Is it possibly the case that there are two
different versions of the 4145A? Or maybe that it can boot from EITHER
hard- or soft-sectored media?? The latter would be most unusual. This
is the first I've heard of this; I had assumed (sorry!) that you were
just misremembering about your 4145A's boot disk being hard-sectored.

We should probably suss this out.

I'll have to give it a shot - I picked up the zip file 4145A image - and have
a linux/DOS (dual boot) system with both low/quad density and high density
5.25" diskettes. (This system is only used to make copies of "weird" FDDs).

I have one of those set up as well, with an 8" drive connected too, in
an external chassis with a switchbox and one of John Wilson's FDADAP
boards to handle the TG43 signal and such. That system also has a
9-track tape drive, as well as 3480 and 3490 (IBM mainframe) cartridge
tape drives, and a DEC TZ85 for reading DEC TK50 and TK70 tapes.

It's set up to dual-boot Linux and FreeDOS. The FreeDOS side has Mike
Brutman's excellent DOS IP stack, as well as EtherDFS talking to a UNIX
server elsewhere on the network for quickly and easily moving disk
images around from the DOS side.

The Linux side also mounts the DOS filesystem, to make short work of
automated backups and such, and doing things like bulk pattern-based
renames of hundreds of disk images at a time which would be too
cumbersome under DOS, etc.

I am using the motherboard's integrated floppy controller, which I
carefully selected to be able to handle different encodings, data rates,
etc. It's a dual Pentium Pro board, 440FX-based, if memory serves it's
a Micronics W6-LI.

This works great, and serves most of our media interchange needs at
the museum.

For *really* weird disk formats that the PC controller cannot handle,
we have a relatively new flux-transition imaging setup based on a
GreaseWeazle board.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA