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Applesauce FDC disk imaging tools - testimonials?

dmemphis

dmemphis

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2014
Messages
262
Location
Pottstown, PA
I'm wondering how comprehensive a solution it
has become and how well it works on all supported
formats.

If anyone recommends it from first hand experience for
doing all the disk formats that it is supposed do,
please chime in.

(I have done disk image management with all the varied
tools but if Applesause does it all well with one package
I may go this way for the museum and warehouse use. I
need to know before I set up all the old stand-byes to
support our disk imaging)

- Doug Crawford
VCF Museum Mgr
 
It is an excellent solution and John is a great guy who bends over backwards to support it.
Two issues is they are currently out of stock and the software only works with MacOS.
It is worth buying a machine though, the box is that good.
 
I haven't had much occasion to use it yet (have verified basic functionality, now need to get some proper oak-cask-aged cyclomethicone for some very mouldy disks), but I can vouch that John lapped the extra mile several times to deal with UPS's hilarious mixups shipping the device to the UK. I doubt I'm his favourite customer, but from my point of view he's definitely a hall of fame seller.
 
I wrote a review for AppleSauce last year. It is quite simply phenomenal! I've only used it for Apple II disks, but it successfully imaged the majority of my collection. There were a few disks it couldn't figure out and I list them in my review. I used Virtual ][ on the Mac to verify the integrity of the generated .woz files. Here's my review: https://planemo.org/2020/07/11/fun-with-the-applesauce-floppy-drive-controller/

ECNeilson
 
I've been looking for a solution to dump some 8" hard sector disks and I was going to give applesauce a try. Anyone have any success story in regard to hard sector disks? There is not too much information, but the 1.50 release notes say, "Full support for hard sectored disks when using PC drives." I would assume this includes 8 inch drives using the PC cabled interface?
 
If it isn't supported "out of the box" I can almost guarantee it will be within a day or two after John receives an A2R from the flux imager. But, if it's one of those early 8" media types with sector holes around the *outer* perimeter you will need the proper drive - OR - be prepared to improvise a photo-sensor.
 
I installed a sensor in a 40 track single sided OEM apple II drive this evening and tested quite a few C64 flippy disks with applesauce. I can't think of any flux device that makes imaging C64 disks so easy.
 
I tested with a PC floppy today and tried a few hard sectored H89 disks and it beautifully saved them as flux and H8D files. The interface is absolutely beautiful.

Screen Shot 2023-01-27 at 9.58.43 PM.png
 
Completely agree with all the praise. It's been a wonderful tool to archive old disks. John's support and knowledge both astound. If you have questions, jump on the discord and the whole community rallies to help. The Fast Imager allowed me to recover several dodgy disks that I don't think I could have with any other tool.
 
I did have John hunt me down over the Nabu PC floppy issue with creating proper images with ImageDisk. He figured out the issue within a couple of hours of back and forth discussion and me supplying him with images from my Applesauce. When he found the solution, he also offered to create a customize his implementation of ImageDisk to be able to use IMD files but since it would not be compatible with the original ImageDisk, I didn't think it was a good idea and others might get confused. In any case, he went way beyond the call of supporting his product and it's just great all around. If he has some available (they go quickly), I wouldn't hesitate to get one.
 
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