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How to read those old 5.25" floppies

Discussion in 'All other topics' started by Prisoner, Mar 9, 2004.

  1. Prisoner

    Prisoner Guest

    This will probally only help about 1% of the people out there. But I found this out last night when I connected a old 5.25 drive to my old Pentium 200. If you have Data on a 5.25 floppy and you put the floppy in to read and Windows says Not correctly formated do you want to format, this is how you can get it to read.
    First say NO to do you want to format.
    Then lift the door (gate up on the drive).
    Then click to read again.
    It will say drive not ready.
    Then flip the door down to correct read possition.
    Then click retry.

    This worked for 10 diskes that didn't have tape around the centre to protect it. These were not being correctly picked up, but when you flip the door up the read head can move around and aligns the disc up perfectly. Then when you flip the door down it picks and can magically read the disk again.

    So I thought I would put this up for all the odd people that still have backups from 1990 on 5.25 floppies.
     
  2. Xian

    Xian Regular member

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    I converted mine a long time ago but I have been seeing more interest in older games that were on 5 1/4" since the new DOS Box http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/faq.php is now working with protected mode games. I got it to load Magic Carpet and Crusader No Remorse the other night but Duke Nukem 3D was still very choppy. If nothing else it is a reason to get those old 5 1/4" floppies converted since many are now playable through emulation. Dos Box basically emulates a 386 with Sound Blaster.
     
  3. Prisoner

    Prisoner Guest

    Thanks for the link. I was trying to think of a way to slow it down to play old games likes sopwith and load runner.
     
  4. aXidburn

    aXidburn Guest

    wait how exactly do u play those games on that web site..(i wish i could play the old california games!!!!!) and what is dosbox?

    ...anyway who still has thosw old disks?? how much memory do they hold like 1 mb? if that much?
     
  5. Xian

    Xian Regular member

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    aXidburn,
    You will still need the original disks to play them in DosBox. Once you start it you should be at a Z: prompt. What I did was create a directory on my hard drive and then mount that in DosBox. Type
    mount c D:\dosgames
    That will mount the directory D:\dosgames as C: in DosBox. Then just change to C: and run the game as you would in DOS. A good tutorial is at http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=2502
    I still have a lot of old games, you might be able to find them on abandonware sites. I had California Games on the Amiga though, not the PC.
     
  6. Motomatt

    Motomatt Regular member

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    They have a emulator for just about every old arcade game out there. I have most of the games you are talking about running on my XBOX.. pretty cool

    Matt
     
  7. Prisoner

    Prisoner Guest

    A double sided compression allowed 5.25 could hold 1.2Mb. But then 3.5`s can have 1.38Mb, So you can see why they died. But you should know your computer roots. I also have some old 12inch by 18inch tapes. Those are old and only have about 100 to 300Kb on them.
    THe classics were great, I emulation of the xbox made me consider geting it. But a Computer is cheaper and more praticle.
     
  8. aXidburn

    aXidburn Guest

    ok i lost you there...i dont have any of the orginal games or the disks for the disk drives....nothing, lol...is there anyway to get a emulator for the pc?(like nintendo)
     
  9. Motomatt

    Motomatt Regular member

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    You betcha! I have super nintendo,nintendo,ps1,sega,genesis,n64,MAME all running on my XBOX. They have a emulator for just about what ever game you can think of.. Just gotta locate the roms for the games. Which I hear there is a new law about not having to own the roms and stuff.. Something about them being vintage arcade games and being able to preserve them or something? Not sure.. But I know they have every game you could think of and yes you can run them on your PC. Here is a link to a emulator called MAME it emulates anything you have seen in the arcade and also some links to others..http://www.mameworld.net/

    Matt
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2004
  10. andmerr

    andmerr Guest

    nice thread guys and some great tips, i was wondering how to get the info off my old discs.Still have the drive and even though it is quite old still works great,but is not very practical in this day of technological sophistication.

    thanks again prisoner for the solution
     
  11. aXidburn

    aXidburn Guest

  12. Motomatt

    Motomatt Regular member

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    Looks to me like a list of games that are supported by that particuliar program. Not sure though I dont mess around with DOSbox. I have 5.12 gigs of MAME roms so if you have seen it in a arcade I most likely have it.

    Matt
     
  13. Xian

    Xian Regular member

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    The list on dosbox is just a compatibility list, there are no ROMs or old DOS games there. It is very useful to me since I still have all the old games from 1990 onward when I got my first PC compatible. Before that I had a bridgeboard that run PC stuff from an Amiga but mainly just used the bridgeboard for productivity stuff and the Amiga for games. PC games were still CGA graphics and no sound back then.
     

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