Hi all.
As some may be aware I'm returning to the fold of CPC owners after a break of some 30 years and have so far acquired a CPC464 (the most disgustingly dirty and filthy example ever seen (but which still works fine)) and a 6128 which came with no disks whatsoever.
I replaced the belt on the 6128 (as the old one had turned into something resembling hard black grease) and acquired a disk which 'cat's but doesn;t run the games (run"disk" etc just seems to load nothing). I got a blank disk from a very friendly chap who sent it for free when I bought a tape game from him, and this disk works ok. Can read and write no probs. (mostly).
So I saw on eBay a collection of 11 CF2's which I promptly bought. Now, they are the proper disks (CPM+ for the 9512) etc, however not one of them will read on my 6128. All say read fail. I've gone back to the 'working' disks and they are fine.
Question is, did the 9512 or other machines format the disks differently? Or should I be able to view the contents by CAT?
Thanks all.
The PCW discs are a different format, best to format them on the CPC and see if they are OK.
Cool. That's fine. Can you please remind me of the format command?
It's been 30+ years remember.
You will need the CPM Diskit program (or other utility) to format the discs. If you don't have anything to do this send me a disc (and stamped SAE) and I'll copy onto it a formatting program for you.
Multimark is a good formatting program that will mark bad disk sectors allowing a disk to be used without errors
Or you could buy a Gotek (using a USB key) or a HxC (old ones use SD cards, new ones use a USB key too) as a B drive and put files on them without using the real disk drive.
Quote from: tjohnson on 19:36, 11 February 19
Multimark is a good formatting program that will mark bad disk sectors allowing a disk to be used without errors
Could you put a Link on the forum as I cannot find Multimark ?
Thanks. Ray
My bad its called Multi Mark
http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=9297
Quote from: Audronic on 23:25, 11 February 19
Could you put a Link on the forum as I cannot find Multimark ?
Thanks. Ray
@tjohnson (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=2129)
Thanks
Ray
I think we have a couple of formating listings here on the forum?
That shall be extremely handy... I have 10s of discs marked unreadable..
I have also used this other utility: tbh disc repair
https://cpcrulez.fr/applications_disc-tbh_disc_repair.htm
http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=8934
Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk
Quote from: Blurredman on 14:44, 12 February 19
That shall be extremely handy... I have 10s of discs marked unreadable..
If the disks are not Originals, I use a magnet passed over both sides of the disk to re align the flux and unstick some heavily magnetised sections.
Then I REFORMAT the disks and my success rate is very high.
You could try that.
Ray
Quote from: Audronic on 23:22, 12 February 19
If the disks are not Originals, I use a magnet passed over both sides of the disk to re align the flux and unstick some heavily magnetised sections.
Then I REFORMAT the disks and my success rate is very high.
You could try that.
Ray
I will try that.. they're useless otherwise.. I also have around 50 5.25" discs that are brand new out of the box that neither a pc or amstrad will format (track 0 issues mainly)..
Will give it a go!
Hello,
Regarding your first question, the PCW machines can read various of theAmstrad disk formats, but the CPC machines may well read ONLY their own/correct format. As noted, the disk may be OK, just got wrong format on.
Yes, I too often use a magnet to make sure the disk is 'clean', so a new format will work better.
As for your 5.25" disks, are they DD or HD. If the disks are DD, and you're using them in a machine which defaults to HD, then this may give a problem. Also vice versa. If you use the dir /? command, this will give all the options, so that you can over-ride the default settings. This will allow you to format DD disks in an HD drive. Of course you cannot do a HD disk in a DD drive - well, you might try, but you might damage something as the 40 track drive tries to do tracks 41 thru 80!! Oh, just to be pedantic, it MIGHT be OK with tr 41 and 42, some drives/disks might manage that, but there's a limit!!
Geoff
Just double checked the first message - I guess that the 6128 drive is CF2, i.e. a single sided 40 track drive? The 9512 disks are certainly 80 track, double sided. No chance of a read. If the 6128 drive IS actually CF2DD (80t double sided) then it MIGHT read, but the format comments might now apply as there were variants.
Geoff
I think you can read PCW disks with ParaDOS if you have a PCW drive connected to the CPC. I'm pretty sure I've done this before.
Bryce.
Gryzor mentioned a couple of formatting listings on the forum?
Having trouble finding them.
Not learned my way round here yet.
Can someone link them?
I'm going to send a couple of disks off for someone else to format, at least then I'll have somewhere to start
Quote from: GeoffB17 on 15:05, 13 February 19
As for your 5.25" disks, are they DD or HD. If the disks are DD, and you're using them in a machine which defaults to HD, then this may give a problem. Also vice versa. If you use the dir /? command, this will give all the options, so that you can over-ride the default settings. This will allow you to format DD disks in an HD drive. Of course you cannot do a HD disk in a DD drive - well, you might try, but you might damage something as the 40 track drive tries to do tracks 41 thru 80!! Oh, just to be pedantic, it MIGHT be OK with tr 41 and 42, some drives/disks might manage that, but there's a limit!!
Geoff
HD discs, but even on a pc with a 1.2mb drive they fail to format. I have tried 3x different 1.2m drives, in three different Os's.
I used to use the discs, and when i can find one that works, successfully to put AMSTRAD .dsk onto a disc using SAMdisk.
This thread has two separate issues overlapping.
The OP may well now be sorted, I think it's been settled that he's got PCW 9512 format disks that will not read on a 6128, and it's been settled why this is, and he's hoping the get the disks he has correctly formatted, whereupon they may be fine.
The other issue from someone else related to 5.25" disks, and this is less clear.
I have a large number of HD floppies, and these usually work OK, although I've had odd ones that do not, or are not reliable. I have found that HD disks seem to be less reliable than the DD type, both DD disks used on a 360k drive, and also DD disks formatted to 730k (80 track, but still normal density) on an HD (80 track) drive.
Check the following. Hold the disk up to a bright light, so that you can see how near to transparent the magnetic material is. Compare a DD disk, and a HD disk. Looking at the DD disk, the material should appear totally, or near totally, NOT-transparent. With the HD type, depending on the approx date of manufacturer, the material will appear much more transparent than the DD disks, and in some cases VERY transparent.
As I understand it, the 1.2 Mb drives default to using the HD format, and they will try to do so unless they are explicitly told otherwise. There may well be jumpers on the drive to set this, so you COULD alter the jumper setting to force the default to 360k if required. There is no autodetect on the actual disks (unlike the situation with the 3.5" disks).
The big problem will be that the margin of error for the reading/writing is far smaller at the best of times given the thin-ness of the material, so it will not take much to cause the disks to fail. If the same disks are failing on different drives, this does suggest that the acual disks have a problem, but I'm not sure why this might be if they once DID work. But, what might have happened to them in the meantime, if they've since been formatted as DD, or on a 40 track drive, then this (wrong) format could webb be causing a problem because the 80 track format being put on top is not capable of overwriting the 40t format, you need to do the job with a magnet, and maybe a number of times.
The only thing I might suggest, if you MUST use these disks, would be to send me one so that I can try one, on the drives I have, and compare with HD disks I have which do work, and if the disk will NOT work (as you describe) check my methods (and my magnet) and see if I CAN get it to work. Also, I could send you a couple of known OK HD disks to see what THEY do on your drives.
Geoff
Discs formatted and verified OK.
I have put Xexor, DES and Protext on them. I also found CPM disc version and have included that as well.
Links:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Desktop_Environment_System
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/User:Executioner
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Protext#/search
Thanks for all your help! Looks like I will have an over abundance of CPM disks then as I ordered 2x sets from eBay so that I at least have some originals.
I've formatted a few and yes, they seem to work good.
I have another problem but I am going to start a new thread for that as otherwise it will get lost.
Thanks again!!
Nice that you resolved the issue, but still, anyone's got the formating listings that were posted here years ago?
Quote from: Gryzor on 13:48, 20 February 19
Nice that you resolved the issue, but still, anyone's got the formating listings that were posted here years ago?
Could it be:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/disk-format-in-basic/ (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/disk-format-in-basic/)
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/disc-formatting-from-your-basic-programs/ (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/disc-formatting-from-your-basic-programs/)
Ohh you're the man! We should probably post these on the wiki if we find the correct page/section...
Slightly (?) off topic:Years ago, when I jumped back on the cpc, I was in a similar situation; A couple of non-readable disks and no software to format them.
I used an emulator to run discology and covert a copying/format utility to tape and saved it on a CDT file.Then I convert the CDT to wav and connect the speaker-out of the pc to the tape-in of the cpc.
Worked like a charm :)