[solved] Can't read 720K floppies

[abalone]

I have a bunch of 720K DOS format DD floppy disks still in use until I get a long-enough ethernet cable and a dose of patience. However, I can't mount these in Kubuntu. Dolphin quotes this in the statusline: "mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified." I dunno what to do now. Create a new /dev entry?

[sithlord48]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

from the error the issue seams to be the format of the disk it self. i have not used a 720k floppy in a LONG time, so if there is not data on there that you need then i would suggest using "gparted" or another partition tool to created a partition that can be read, if the data is something that you need to get off the disk then i would suggest looking in to the disk file format and reading up on mounting it in linux .

[Telengard]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

Have you tried with FreeDOS?

I susggest getting the files off those old disks and on to more modern media. CD or DVD would be a good choice. Make extra copies if they are important to you.

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

I need 720K disks to transfer files to and fro, so I can't just read them once and then ditch them for something better.

It's not that I can't read them at all, I just want to read them in the environment I would actually use them (i.e. Kubuntu).

[sithlord48]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

well what format are they in? (i.e fat, fat16, ext3) i am guessing what ever format that its in can't be one still used commonly today, once you know the format search in your package manager for that format (synaptic recommended). and you might find a program / driver /plugin for mount that will allow you to mount that format, if not google would be your friend at that point.

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

Nothing exotic. DOS format, as I said. More precisely, they were formatted on an Amiga 1200 for DOS compatibility ("12345678.ABC" type filenames) and were readable/writable on Windows until XP ditched support for 720K disks (but even then they were sporadically readable). FAT or FAT16, then?

[sithlord48]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

i would start w/ fat. then fat16.

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

There's no fat or fat16, but there's an msdos filesystem for the mount command. That seems suitable for MS-DOS format disks. However, sudo mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 gets me mount: /dev/fd0: can't read superblock with all the disks I've tried so far.

[sithlord48]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

i was searching around trying to find more info (i don't have a floppy drive at all to test w/ here). perhaps you can find more help with this

mount: /dev/fd0: can't read superblock

some things that stuck out,,

does the dir your trying to mount to exsist?
try to boot a dos disk in the drive (could be hw issue)

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

i was searching around trying to find more info (i don't have a floppy drive at all to test w/ here). perhaps you can find more help with this

mount: /dev/fd0: can't read superblock

some things that stuck out,,

does the dir your trying to mount to exsist?
try to boot a dos disk in the drive (could be hw issue)

Yah, the dir exists and I can mount and use my 1.44 MB disks. I've used the same drive to create BIOS flash disks, and flashed the BIOS successfully. I'll try to boot one of those to see if I can read the 720K disks there - if they still work at all in this drive. Sanity checks are always a good idea.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

720K DOS formatted floppies are fat12.

I am running 8.04 here and I just stuck a 720K disk in it's 1.44 drive. It reads perfectly! Perhaps the drive in your Linux box is a 720K then things could possibly be different. Linux might support a 1.44 drive and not a 720 drive. Can you read anything in the floppy drive?

Crazy suggestion: If you boot DOS on the Linux box you should be able to read your files and copy them to the HDD if you have a partition on the HDD which DOS can recognize.

BTW: I just remembered how 6.04 was unable to deal properly with floppies of any kind. Perhaps that problem is back. Since so few people use floppies any more, it might take a while to find any bugs with it.

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

I've already worked with a 1.44 MB disk with Ubuntu 9.10 and created bootable BIOS flash disks with Jaunty (or possibly Intrepid or even Hardy, can't remember which), all with the same disk drive. I'll boot to something DOSsy next time I turn the comp on and see if the disks still work at all. Unfortunately there're no files to salvage just once but rather to carry frequently updated files back and forth between this comp and another (with only a HD and a 720K drive and no long-enough network cable for my router), so this is not a very comfortable solution to the problem.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

I moved files to/from my main Linux box with floppies for a little while. Finally I got the energy up to network all my old hardware. Finding 16 bit network cards with matching drivers is not too hard for DOS. Other OSs probably not so easy, and 8 bit cards are definitely harder to scare up. I haven't had a need for it but apparently the parallel port to ethernet adaptors work well and are a great solution for difficult situations. It sounds like you just haven't gotten to it yet, but you could also consider doing a serial transfer. RS232 is pretty robust and can go a long way without special wire. An old piece of telephone wire would do, so there would not necessarily be any cost involved. Modems also work with cheap wire, but you probably have serial ports already.

PS: I understand this is not your interest here, but it was suggested that you backup your disks. That is always a good idea for important data. However, floppies last a long time - especially the older ones. Vintage computerists find that the old floppies, especially 5 1/4" ones, generally read perfectly after many years.

[Telengard]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

I moved files to/from my main Linux box with floppies for a little while. Finally I got the energy up to network all my old hardware. Finding 16 bit network cards with matching drivers is not too hard for DOS. Other OSs probably not so easy, and 8 bit cards are definitely harder to scare up. I haven't had a need for it but apparently the parallel port to ethernet adaptors work well and are a great solution for difficult situations. It sounds like you just haven't gotten to it yet, but you could also consider doing a serial transfer. RS232 is pretty robust and can go a long way without special wire. An old piece of telephone wire would do, so there would not necessarily be any cost involved. Modems also work with cheap wire, but you probably have serial ports already.

PS: I understand this is not your interest here, but it was suggested that you backup your disks. That is always a good idea for important data. However, floppies last a long time - especially the older ones. Vintage computerists find that the old floppies, especially 5 1/4" ones, generally read perfectly after many years.

As Ole Juul suggests, networking of some kind is far preferable than relying on floppy support. I created a serial crossover cable and used it to transfer my Amiga files to my DOS 6.22 computer by writing a very simple program in BASIC. (If interested, you might be able to find the source code by googling for BASTRANS.)

If it were my stuff, I would create disk images of the floppies suitable for use in an emulator, burn those to CDs, and then move on with life.

[abalone]

Re: Can't read 720K floppies

I already have ethernet and (a trial version of) a TCP/IP stack on the Amiga side, so I suppose I could rig something up with an FTP server eventually. I just don't have a long-enough cable to reach the router and it seems like a lot of work for something that should have been so simple. Even if I got the network all set up I'd like 720K floppies to work on the Ubuntu side.

If it were my stuff, I would create disk images of the floppies suitable for use in an emulator, burn those to CDs, and then move on with life.

The emulator can simulate Amiga hard disks with plain Linux filesystem directories, so disk images are unnecessarily inconvenient here. Anyway, this wouldn't really help with files you meant to work on on both Amiga and Ubuntu.