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Writing PC booter img files

falter

falter

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I've done this before but for the life of me I can't remember how. I want to write an image of a PC booter of a Sierra game to actual disk. I tried with dskimage, with a real 360 k drive. I think the format was something like dskimage this disk.img 0:40:2:9. It tries but it basically just keep saying it can't write the sector. I don't remember using this when I wrote a Tandy booter recently. What is the right software here? These img files are not readable by Winimage.

Many thanks
 
WinImage works fine, it does not matter if it can "read" it (it can't with Mac disks either, but can still read and write images of them). It only can not understand the missing/unknown filesystem, which is not really relevant.

As long as it is a simple raw sector image, any standard software will work. For pure DOS, I normally use "FIRM".

Did you try a different disk? Maybe the one you tried to write to was damaged.
 
Usage: dskimage source target
BIOS disk specifications are of the form: d:t:h:s where
d is the BIOS disk drive number (0 to 3)
t is the number of tracks (usually 40 or 80)
h is the number of heads/sides (usually 2, could be 1)
s is the number of sectors per track (usually 9, 15, or 18)

Larry
 
Many of those early Sierra games have copy protection. If the disk image is in a format that has the protection intact, WinImage/dskimage isn't going to work.
 
True. That always makes me wonder why people say "a game" when asking for help, instead of just telling what game and probably give size and crc of the file in question, which would make helping so much easier. :D
 
There is no one right tool, unfortunately. WinImage is convenient, but many booters are either in a non-standard format that WinImage won't work with, or copy protected.

So the only real answer is to look at what image file you are trying to write and see what tool is appropriate.
-WinImage or DskImage for standard 360k/720k/1.2mb/1.44mb image files. (There a are numerous other tools out there for standard raw sector images)
-ImageDisk, TeleDisk, or Copy II PC + Transcopy for many copy protected titles (usually the image format dictates the tool)
-Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, GreaseWeasel, Transcopy hardware for heavy copy protection or non FM/MFM encoding. (Flux images can usually be converted between different flux formats).
 
Looks like standard 360K images. You should be able to write them with either dskimage or winimage (even though it won't show the files). Are you able to at least format the disk?
 
Plasma said:
Looks like standard 360K images. You should be able to write them with either dskimage or winimage (even though it won't show the files). Are you able to at least format the disk?
Click to expand...
I can format it yes.. but that seems to be it.
 
Try FIRM or rawwrite, or even the DOS version of dd. They should all work.

As for WinImage, yes, you are right in this case. It would work if you read the image from an actual disk. WinImage would then be able to write the image back to another disk. But apparently, it refuses to open it once it has been saved as a file.
 
WinImage only opens standard FAT formatted floppy disks. In this case the image has an invalid Bios Parameter Block in the boot sector, so it is non-standard. Even though DOS will still read it.

The Bios Paramter Block was defined in DOS 2.x, so most DOS 1.x formatted disks, and many disks formatted by early third party formatters also have the same problem.

When I encounter raw sector images like this, my preference is to convert it to ImageDisk format using one of the following commands:

160k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-8 /1

180k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-9 /1

320k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-8 /2

360k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-9 /2

1.2mb raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=3 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-15 /2

720k (3.5") raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-9 /2

1.44mb raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=3 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-18 /2
 
SomeGuy said:
WinImage only opens standard FAT formatted floppy disks. In this case the image has an invalid Bios Parameter Block in the boot sector, so it is non-standard. Even though DOS will still read it.

The Bios Paramter Block was defined in DOS 2.x, so most DOS 1.x formatted disks, and many disks formatted by early third party formatters also have the same problem.

When I encounter raw sector images like this, my preference is to convert it to ImageDisk format using one of the following commands:

160k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-8 /1

180k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-9 /1

320k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-8 /2

360k raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=40 SS=512 SM=1-9 /2

1.2mb raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=3 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-15 /2

720k (3.5") raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=5 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-9 /2

1.44mb raw to imd:
BIN2IMD <image.img> <image.imd> DM=3 N=80 SS=512 SM=1-18 /2
Click to expand...
Much appreciated for these! Will give a try!
 
yeah BIN2IMD doesn't seem to work. When I write with IMD it shows a 300k disk being written.. writes fine with no errors, but the disk is neither bootable nor readable. rawrite is kind of stirring some memories though.
 
The 360k one seemed to work for me. You aren't using a 1.2mb drive are you? The Disk Mode parameter sets the image to use 250KBPS rather than 300KBPS. You would also need to enable double stepping, but the results would not be readable in a 360k drive unless you thoroughly degaussed the disk first. So, much easier just to use a genuine 360k drive.

Disk mode 0=500Khz FM
Disk mode 1=300Khz FM
Disk mode 2=250Khz FM
Disk mode 3=500Khz MFM
Disk mode 4=300Khz MFM
Disk Mode 5=250Khz MFM
 
No I was using a 360k. Wouldn't produce anything readable.

However, I got a copy of rawrite3 and that *did* work perfectly, even with a 1.2mb floppy drive that I later tried out.

I'm going to play around a bit and see if I can master bin2imd and writing disks that way, it may come in handy. Many thanks for the tips so far. I'm wondering if maybe my 360k drive is a bit glitchy.
 
There is an old DOS disk copy program called OnePass that will make a perfect copy of any copy protected pc disk. There is no copy protected pc floppy disk that it cannot make a perfect duplicate of. It can do pretty amazing things with a floppy disk. Written back in 89 or 90. Can make a 1.44m look like a 720k and things like that. Leaves the disk image on the hard drive if you like and you and can make multiple copies. It directly accesses the bios int13H. Dosen't use DOS interrupts. Much lower level. 100% assembly language. I have attaced a copy.
 

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I just downloaded that file, transferred the disk images to a PCjr, and used DskImage to write the images. There were no problems and the PCjr is happy running Black Cauldron now.

Those images are standard 360 diskette dumps. There is no copy projection. Use "dskimage disk1.img 0:40:2:9" and "dskimage disk2.img 0:40:2:9" to write them. If your target disk is marginal you will get write errors, but that's going to happen no matter what program you use.

I also tested the images in VirtualBox; it was happy to use them as 360K diskettes.

160K, 180K, 320K etc. standard DOS images all work fine. Copy protection is not handled though. If you are having problems with it, email me ...


-Mike
 
Wait Mike. You got dskimg working on a pcjr? I posed this question a year or two ago and i was told the non PC compatibility of the pcjr makes Dskimg incompatible on the pcjr.
 
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