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If I can find a way to copy the contents of the disk I would be glad to upload or share the program. It is mentioned in a number of HP documents such 9018-06438-3 on using HPIB. So far I have not succeeded at making a copy using a USB floppy drive on a Windows 11 machine. Windows claims the disk is unformatted. I did try the disk management diskmgmt.msc but no luck.
I do have a couple of older XP machines but they do not have floppy drives installed (just CD drives).
?
Is this worth pursuing? Suggestions?
?
Jim
?
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On 2/13/25 13:59, Jim via groups.io wrote: If I can find a way to copy the contents of the disk I would be glad to upload or share the program. It is mentioned in a number of HP documents such 9018-06438-3 on using HPIB. So far I have not succeeded at making a copy using a USB floppy drive on a Windows 11 machine. Windows claims the disk is unformatted. I did try the disk management diskmgmt.msc but no luck.
I do have a couple of older XP machines but they do not have floppy drives installed (just CD drives).
Is this worth pursuing? Suggestions? Wow. It is definitely worth pursuing. I hope Windows didn't do anything to the disk. A USB floppy drive won't work for something like this. If you are willing to send it to me, I can image it and get it into the public archives. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
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Two things come to mind:
1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
B. If you have access to a *UX box (Linux, Solaris, etc.) ISTR that there is a "raw" copy command that will copy a data source to a data destination byte-by-byte.
If I can find a way to copy the contents of the disk I would be glad to upload or share the program. It is mentioned in a number of HP documents such 9018-06438-3 on using HPIB. So far I have not succeeded at making a copy using a USB floppy drive on a Windows 11 machine. Windows claims the disk is unformatted. I did try the disk management diskmgmt.msc but no luck.
I do have a couple of older XP machines but they do not have floppy drives installed (just CD drives).
?
Is this worth pursuing? Suggestions?
?
Jim
?
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The disk is most likely in LIF format so your Windows machines won’t recognize it. Best recommendation is to get it to Dave McGuire as he’s volunteered to make it available to the public.?
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Show quoted text
On Feb 13, 2025, at 1:51?PM, Dave Daniel via groups.io <kc0wjn@...> wrote:
? Two things come to mind:
1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
B. If you have access to a *UX box (Linux, Solaris, etc.) ISTR that there is a "raw" copy command that will copy a data source to a data destination byte-by-byte.
If I can find a way to copy the contents of the disk I would be glad to upload or share the program. It is mentioned in a number of HP documents such 9018-06438-3 on using HPIB. So far I have not succeeded at making a copy using a USB floppy drive on a Windows 11 machine. Windows claims the disk is unformatted. I did try the disk management diskmgmt.msc but no luck.
I do have a couple of older XP machines but they do not have floppy drives installed (just CD drives).
?
Is this worth pursuing? Suggestions?
?
Jim
?
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On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via groups.io wrote: 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option. No, this is NOT an option. A USB-connected floppy drive does not allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the required registers aren't even present. Such access is generally required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard" format, which these are not. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
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I'd try and get hold of a parallel floppy.drive and if still no joy try and use an old.tool called spinrite on it back in the day I had success recovering data from floppy drives when all was lost. I've probably got an old dell kicking around with a 34pin ribbon based floppy in it.
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.
? ? ? ? ? -Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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To the best of my knowledge, this is the only time this particular piece of software has shown up. Now is not the time to be experimenting.
Spinrite is a surface scanning program, not a program that allows access to data in different filesystem types. We're not dealing with a PC disk that has errors here; this is software for an HP-9000 workstation, which has about as much in common with a PC as a sewing machine.
The correct thing to do here is to image the disk using a flux-transition imager or something like lifutils, TeleDisk, or ImageDisk.
-Dave
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On 2/13/25 16:11, Paul Carrington via groups.io wrote: I'd try and get hold of a parallel floppy.drive and if still no joy try and use an old.tool called spinrite on it back in the day I had success recovering data from floppy drives when all was lost. I've probably got an old dell kicking around with a 34pin ribbon based floppy in it.
On Thu, 13 Feb 2025, 20:41 Dave McGuire via groups.io <>, <mcguire@... <mailto:neurotica.com@groups.io>> wrote:
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via groups.io <> wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.
? ? ? ? ? -Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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Show quoted text
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.
? ? ? ? ? -Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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Second that. Off to McGuire with it.
Do NOT mess around with these disks with a Windows or Linux workstation.
--
With best regards
Tam HANNA
Enjoy electronics? Join 21k4 other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at
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Sending it to someone that can do the work is probably the best idea.
?
My way of dealing with old diskettes is having old PCs running DOS and early windows and older linux that have 3.5, 5 1/4 and 8" drives. Takes up a little space but when you need to read or write something vintage, old hardware and software usually works. ?
?
Also if you have a later piece of HP gear with a 3.5 disk drive that reads/writes both LIF and PC DOS formats, and has an Ethernet connection, you can often pop the LIF disk in the drive and read the contents back to a PC.? Later you may be able to format a PC DOS diskette in the drive and push the contents back to a disk that can be read in more modern or PC type hardware.
--
T. Gerbic
Central California
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Indeed Spinrite is a disc scanning and (where physically
possible, that is, the disk is not beyond use due to physical
damage to it's surface etc) an error recovery tool.? (I have my
own licenced copies of 6.0 and now 6.1)
It is OS/data content/Format agnostic, it can happily scan a LIF
format disk and do it's work, just as well as with any other OS's
file system, as it only works on tracks and sectors.? The content
and format of the actual data in the sectors is not important.?
(I.e.? If the hardware can read it, it can be tested.)
It reads and checks for errors using the established, CRC
algorithms and so on, plus the controllers own status flags.
If it finds an error, it tries repositioning the heads,
re-approaching from either side of the track to see if there is a
better read to be had.? Many drives actually enable the read,
while the heads are still settling on-track, so approaching from
one side or the other, can make a major difference.
As floppy disk/heads are in full contact (unlike hard drives)
that can also physically move contamination around, sometimes
making things worse, sometimes getting a good read.
I always run a head cleaning task before and after working with a
floppy disk.
Once a sector has been read successfully (if in repair mode) it
will be rewritten, and checked that is good too..
In the past day job, I used it to "recover" a couple of HP
instrument created floppy disks with 100% success, one was (as it
turned out) in LIF format, the other was DOS.
(I even recovered an early iPod drive, after extracting the drive
and using an adapter.? The family who owned it were happy and
amazed, having been previously told by an Apple store, they are
unrepairable.)
It can also test and "refresh" SSD's too, as they can slow down
with use.? (Windows machines in particular!)? Just do a run on
Level 2, it forces the drives own logic to do most of the job.?
Then re-writes the recovered data, that will end up physically
somewhere else in the SSD memory array, but that has no access
speed penalty, unlike a moving head hard drive.
As above, I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and 6.1, 6.1 has
lost the floppy testing ability, but 6.0 still has it.? Steve
Gibson (it's author) has said, that 5.x versions are best for
floppy drives, but didn't elaborate why.
6.1 is **MUCH** faster when testing hard drives, any licenced
owner of 6.0 can apply and get a free update to 6.1
Yes, if you have to buy it, it costs, but for under $100 US, the
abilities it gives you to check and often recover troublesome hard
drives and floppy media (with 6.0 or earlier) is well worth it.
I wish we had something like it when I was working on the old 14"
moving head multi-platter drives "back in the day" (late 70's)? It
would likely have mitigated the need to replace a troublesome
platter that had developed a bad spot.? (Have to say, that was
some of the most satisfying work I've ever been involved in.? The
more care you took cleaning and setting a drive up after a platter
or head change, the performance measurably improved.? Fun times!)
? for more info on Spinrite.
It has got me out of a hole on a couple of occasions, both with
earlier Windows machine after a power cut, and more recently on a
Linux PC, that also suffered a sudden power outage while accessing
the main drive.? (My fault that was, I pulled the wrong plug,
while the laptop battery was not present.)? That did take a while
with 6.0 on an 80% full 500G drive, but it all came back to life
as if nothing had happened. ? (Even GRUB was upset after that
unexpected power issue.)
Mr Gibson is also "the explainer in chief" for the "security now"
podcast.?? Find that at? ?? Also well worth
following for anyone involved in anything IT related, at
whatever level, professionally, or just helping friends and family
stay safe.
Regards to All.
Dave G8KBV.
|
Yes, Spinrite is good. I used it heavily in the 1980s and early 1990s, and we use it from time to time at LSSM.
However, one important thing to consider is the disk format. I choose that word carefully; I'm not talking about filesystem layout, but the actual disk format, like FM vs. MFM modulation, number of bytes per sector, number of sectors per track, number of cylinders per disk, and single vs. double-sided. SD, DD, HD, and ED. And then there are the sector header and trailer formats, and the CRC algorithm employed. Unless Spinrite was specifically written to handle those, it cannot. And if that capability has been added since the last time I looked into it, it would only be able to work on certain hardware, i.e. certain floppy controller chips and their variants.
Spinrite is geared primarily toward PCs and the disk formats that they use. There are hundreds of different formats used on floppy disks, and some disk controllers are even electrically incapable of accessing them in any way. (just try to read an Apple GCR-encoded disk with a disk controller built around an 8272 or a PC's D765 chip)
One common LIF format for 5.25" disks uses a 256 byte per sector format, with 16 sectors per track. If Spinrite will deal with that now, I'd love to know about it.
So, primarily for the sake of people searching through the archives, one shouldn't be led to believe that they can cram any floppy disk from any system into a PC's floppy drive and have it be fixed up by Spinrite.
-Dave
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Show quoted text
On 2/14/25 03:44, Dave_G0WBX via groups.io wrote: Indeed Spinrite is a disc scanning and (where physically possible, that is, the disk is not beyond use due to physical damage to it's surface etc) an error recovery tool.? (I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and now 6.1)
It is OS/data content/Format agnostic, it can happily scan a LIF format disk and do it's work, just as well as with any other OS's file system, as it only works on tracks and sectors.? The content and format of the actual data in the sectors is not important. (I.e.? If the hardware can read it, it can be tested.)
It reads and checks for errors using the established, CRC algorithms and so on, plus the controllers own status flags.
If it finds an error, it tries repositioning the heads, re-approaching from either side of the track to see if there is a better read to be had.? Many drives actually enable the read, while the heads are still settling on-track, so approaching from one side or the other, can make a major difference.
As floppy disk/heads are in full contact (unlike hard drives) that can also physically move contamination around, sometimes making things worse, sometimes getting a good read.
I always run a head cleaning task before and after working with a floppy disk.
Once a sector has been read successfully (if in repair mode) it will be rewritten, and checked that is good too..
In the past day job, I used it to "recover" a couple of HP instrument created floppy disks with 100% success, one was (as it turned out) in LIF format, the other was DOS.
(I even recovered an early iPod drive, after extracting the drive and using an adapter.? The family who owned it were happy and amazed, having been previously told by an Apple store, they are unrepairable.)
It can also test and "refresh" SSD's too, as they can slow down with use.? (Windows machines in particular!)? Just do a run on Level 2, it forces the drives own logic to do most of the job. Then re-writes the recovered data, that will end up physically somewhere else in the SSD memory array, but that has no access speed penalty, unlike a moving head hard drive.
As above, I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and 6.1, 6.1 has lost the floppy testing ability, but 6.0 still has it.? Steve Gibson (it's author) has said, that 5.x versions are best for floppy drives, but didn't elaborate why.
6.1 is **MUCH** faster when testing hard drives, any licenced owner of 6.0 can apply and get a free update to 6.1
Yes, if you have to buy it, it costs, but for under $100 US, the abilities it gives you to check and often recover troublesome hard drives and floppy media (with 6.0 or earlier) is well worth it.
I wish we had something like it when I was working on the old 14" moving head multi-platter drives "back in the day" (late 70's)? It would likely have mitigated the need to replace a troublesome platter that had developed a bad spot.? (Have to say, that was some of the most satisfying work I've ever been involved in.? The more care you took cleaning and setting a drive up after a platter or head change, the performance measurably improved.? Fun times!)
for more info on Spinrite.
It has got me out of a hole on a couple of occasions, both with earlier Windows machine after a power cut, and more recently on a Linux PC, that also suffered a sudden power outage while accessing the main drive.? (My fault that was, I pulled the wrong plug, while the laptop battery was not present.)? That did take a while with 6.0 on an 80% full 500G drive, but it all came back to life as if nothing had happened. ? (Even GRUB was upset after that unexpected power issue.)
Mr Gibson is also "the explainer in chief" for the "security now" podcast.?? Find that at Also well worth following for /anyone/ involved in anything IT related, at whatever level, professionally, or just helping friends and family stay safe.
Regards to All.
Dave G8KBV.
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
|
As a grateful user of spinrite for many years, I can add my thumbs up to Dave's excellent description of its many capabilities. Its format-agnostic algorithms are quite powerful. Spinrite has saved my bacon more than once.
--Tom
--
Prof. Thomas H. Lee
Allen Ctr., Rm. 205
420 Via Palou Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
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On 2/14/2025 12:44 AM, Dave_G0WBX via groups.io wrote:
Indeed Spinrite is a disc scanning and (where physically possible, that is, the disk is not beyond use due to physical damage to it's surface etc) an error recovery tool.? (I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and now 6.1)
It is OS/data content/Format agnostic, it can happily scan a LIF format disk and do it's work, just as well as with any other OS's file system, as it only works on tracks and sectors.? The content and format of the actual data in the sectors is not important.? (I.e.? If the hardware can read it, it can be tested.)
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I wanted to put out there that "fdio" is another utility that has been used successfully to read LIF formatted disks:
?
?
?
Like the other solutions, it needs a PC with a real floppy controller (i.e., NOT USB).
?
That web page also has some excellent detailed information on disk formats.
?
As tgerbic mentioned, HP gear with a 3.5 disk drive can read LIF format also. ?Specifically, I can vouch for the 16700 series logic analyzers. ?I was able to read a LIF formatted disk from 1987 with the following characteristics:
?
? ? ? ? ? ? heads: ?2
? ? ? ? ? ?tracks: ?77
? ? ? ? ? sectors: ?16
? ? ? sector_size: ?256
? ? transfer_rate: ?250
? ? track_density: ?135
? ? data_encoding: ?2
? ? ? ? ?capacity: ?630784
?
The analyzer runs HP-UX, so the data is easily transferred elsewhere once read.
?
LIF disks can also be read on Linux machines (again with an attached floppy controller), but it is not straightforward. ?"dd" will not work for 256 bytes/sector, but "fdrawcmd" will.
?
-mark
?
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Every person who has access to old floppy media of virtually any kind made for anything should own a Greasewazle.
(I'm not affiliated - I just appreciate the product that much!)
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On 2/14/25 15:39, Matt Harris via groups.io wrote: Every person who has access to old floppy media of virtually any kind made for anything should own a Greasewazle.
<>
(I'm not affiliated - I just appreciate the product that much!) Agreed 100%! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
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Yeah the greaseweazle is the proper thing to do especially when you want to archive something that isn't a known format. (also not affiliated) On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 3:40?PM Matt Harris via groups.io <kd4pbs@...> wrote:
Every person who has access to old floppy media of virtually any kind made for anything should own a Greasewazle.
(I'm not affiliated - I just appreciate the product that much!)
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Hey Dave M.
?
I'm slightly stunned by the outpouring of community interest and I appreciate your offer.
I don't think that Windoze 11 did anything to the disk. Windows does recognize the USB floppy drive
but it was flummoxed by the "non-contents" of the disk and dutifully offered to format it.? ;-)
I cannot offer any assurances that the disk definitely has the program on it but hopefully it is untouched.
?
Tomorrow I'll check my hoard of stuff in the garage to see if I still have a genuine Dell floppy drive
to swap with the CD drive in my old Latitude D600. If I end up mailing the disk to you I have a few other HP
original disks that should be archived for the group.
?
Jim
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On Friday 14 February 2025 03:39:57 pm Matt Harris via groups.io wrote: Every person who has access to old floppy media of virtually any kind made for anything should own a Greasewazle.
(I'm not affiliated - I just appreciate the product that much!) Interesting gadget, there. In this room is my Imsai 8080, a Kaypro 4, and elsewhere is parked an Osborne Executive, none of which have been powered on in several years. In a cabinet over there is a bunch of floppies. And I can't remember the last time I used one, for any reason whatsoever. But years ago? I'd have been all over getting one of those... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin
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. This has got a lot of useful information on lif reading for the Linux community
On Friday 14 February 2025 03:39:57 pm Matt Harris via wrote:
> Every person who has access to old floppy media of virtually any kind made for anything should own a Greasewazle.
>
>
> (I'm not affiliated - I just appreciate the product that much!)
Interesting gadget,? there.? In this room is my Imsai 8080,? a Kaypro 4,? and elsewhere is parked an Osborne Executive,? none of which have been powered on in several years.? In a cabinet over there is a bunch of floppies.? And I can't remember the last time I used one,? for any reason whatsoever.? But years ago?? I'd have been all over getting one of those...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
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Dave McGuire
