• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

rawrite rawread for PC/XT?

M

mbates14

Member
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
44
Location
Franklin, North Carolina
Hey, Is there a rawrite, or raread for the IBM PC/XT 8088? Just curious as I got disks I want to archive and also write via laplink, but when I do raread it locks up the whole machine, so I assume the version I have isnt 8088 compatible

any thoughts? thanks.
 
mbates14 said:
Hey, Is there a rawrite, or raread for the IBM PC/XT 8088? Just curious as I got disks I want to archive and also write via laplink, but when I do raread it locks up the whole machine, so I assume the version I have isnt 8088 compatible

any thoughts? thanks.
Click to expand...

I wrote a program to do this a few years ago called dskimage - it reads and writes raw sector dumps, and should be compatible with rawrite and similar programs. And yes, it should absolutely work on an 8088.

Here is the link: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/downloads/DskImage.zip

A nice feature of it is that it can be set to retry a few times when a read error is encountered, making it more likely to succeed when the diskettes are marginal.
 
mbbrutman said:
I wrote a program to do this a few years ago called dskimage - it reads and writes raw sector dumps, and should be compatible with rawrite and similar programs. And yes, it should absolutely work on an 8088.

Here is the link: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/downloads/DskImage.zip

A nice feature of it is that it can be set to retry a few times when a read error is encountered, making it more likely to succeed when the diskettes are marginal.
Click to expand...

I can confirm through personal experience that DskImage files are compatible with DD, and I know DD files are compatible with RawWrite, so DskImage files should be fully compatible with RawWrite.
 
Hello

DskImage isn't the prettiest, nor the easiest to use BUT it can copy ALL non protected floppy disks for PC, even the CP/M86 and UCSD p-System floppy disks for PC/XT.
Last (and not least) it has got an outstanding undocumented feature : it's the only one that can read and write ALL DOS format floppy disks images onto an SFR1M44 Floppy to USB emulator (GOTEK)
Even if GOTEK claims it's impossible, you can write 160k, 320K, 180K, 360K, 720K 1,2MB and 1.44MB images onto the SFR1M44 with DskImage.
If the image is bootable, you can boot from the SFR1M44 : i booted from PC-DOS v1.0 and v1.1 from this device on a 486 based PC (only for test purpose).
You can mix ALL the different formats onto the same USB flash drive.
BUT and it's a big "BUT", you cannot see or read these "virtual floppy disks" from the Windows software offered by Gotek : it ONLY work with 1.44MB disk format. The USB flash drive with other floppy disk formats is only usable with DOS and the GOTEK device.
But i didn't try to read these USB flash drives with the GOTEK device AND windows XP, only with 286 to 486 test rigs. I think it might be possible because you should be able to access directly to the "virtual floppy disks" without using the GOTEK software.

Last, did i say it's my favourite DiskImager ? :cool:
 
Teledisk is a DOS program will that run on anything and make an image of any disk whether it's a DOS format or not. Plus, it's menu driven and just plain easy to use. Try it and see if you don't like it as much as I do.
 
Teledisk requires a real floppy controller to talk to.

Dskimage just uses BIOS calls so it will run on real machines, virtual machines, things that emulate at the BIOS level and near compatibles like the PCjr.
 
I think if you look at very early slackware Unix releases, you'll find the C source for rawread/write that are DOS and should run on an 8088, perhaps (or not) requiring a recompilation. There are probably many others.
 
My advice for archiving disks. Involves ImageDisk by Dave Dunfield - http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm/

It requires a 486 still I guess, use a good quality high density floppy drive. It won't work miracles, but it arguably is the most reliable solution.

I seem to recall Windows 2000 Server reading "quad" density disks when I tried oh say 13-14 years ago. If it can read quads (Tandy 2000 images), likely it'll read other things. But a proper imaging setup is the way to go since you asked :). Just pop the sucker in there, and let ID go to work. Don't pull up a directory, don't scratch yer hiney. Just go to work. You may only get one shot.
 
I was real happy with dskimage on my 8088.
I learned it in a minute and set the retries to max.
It recovered data from many disks which were failing to be read.
 
You have to understand that rawread/rawwrite operates with an implicit understanding of the disk format--and is a high-level (DOS API or BIOS) interface to hardware.

IMD is a very different animal and operates at a hardware interface level and makes few, if any assumptions.. Using the IMDU utility, you can convert an .IMD image to a rawwrite image, but its native image format is not compatible with rawread. It does, however keep going when there are errors.
 
Chuck(G) said:
You have to understand that rawread/rawwrite operates with an implicit understanding of the disk format--and is a high-level (DOS API or BIOS) interface to hardware.

IMD is a very different animal and operates at a hardware interface level and makes few, if any assumptions.. Using the IMDU utility, you can convert an .IMD image to a rawwrite image, but its native image format is not compatible with rawread. It does, however keep going when there are errors.
Click to expand...

Most of the programs I know (except IMD, TeleDisk or 22Disk for example) are using BIOS Interrupts for reading/writing sectors. Some these programs presumes a DOS floppy geometry, which has advantages and disadvantages.
If a program assume a typical DOS floppy structure, it could be able to transfer it to a different format (that's an advantage). The disadvantage will occur if you're trying to copy CP/M-86 or XENIX floppies, because these disks do NOT have the DOS BootSec, FAT, Directory etc.
I prefer to use programs which do NOT presume a structure, but uses track/sector numbers. RawWrite is a littlebit too dumb because of ignoring track boundaries. If you really want to copy a 1.2MB 5.25" Disk onto a 1.44MB 3.5" Disk, this IS possible without renumbering/restructuring a floppy image if the disk copy can handle manually given track and sector numbers, ignoring the real structure of the target disk. It is not possible to do that with RawWrite.
If anybody is interested in a small C source for a DOS executable, and the executable itself, too, take a look inside http://www.z80.eu/downloads/disktool.zip
 
Before I open another thread: Is there any software that reads raw sectors from the hard disk and writes them to the serial port so it can be put into an image on another machine?

I began writing an assembler routine for that years ago but it didn’t came over reading the sectors into RAM (simple INT13h loop) since I didn’t know much about low-level UART communication back then.
 
"dskimage" saved my %$. I downloaded some .img files, transferred them to my Win98SE and used dskimage to copy them to 180, 360, 1.2 5.25" floppy formats without any problems. An excellent feature of dskimage is that it is programed by default to try and write to disk up to five times as nessesary. This helped me because my older floppy drive has a slower response time than the computer it is currently connected to, with other writers I received write failures due to my floppy drive lagging behind system commands, other writers gave-up after only one attempt to read and write, but not dskimage. In addition, dsimage will try to read data in problem sectors multiple times automatically as well. Dskimage is very persistent, simple to use, and is not a quitter!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top