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Sequence Bounce Request

Devan
 


On Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:23 AM Shea Alterio <krusete@...> wrote:
I only just joined this list so apologies for butting in on the discussion and if I mentioned something already discussed. 

but I’ve had success backing up corrupted old floppies with Omniflop using a combination of slow step rate or filling bad sectors with 0’s. It’s kind of up to chance whether filling bad sectors with 0’s will keep your disk working or render the image useless. It’s helped me save a lot of almost gone forever disks, though. 



“ For some undetermined reason, almost none of the disk images had the expected 720 KB. One had as few as 416 KB, others had as much as 736 KB. In the latter, the extra 16 KB were filled with 0xAA bytes, which is the same way a normal disk ends. I have no explanation for that, whether it's a bug with the imaging software, an issue with the floppy drive itself, or - could it be? something in the original disks. ”

The 01w floppy format is a plain IBM / DOS compatible 720k disk with its own headers on top. Are you working with img files? It seems like you may be if the files themselves are 720k. I prepared a bunch of HFE format disks for my own 01wfd but later learned that due to HFE files being too big for the Gotek’s RAM, it has to constantly stream them from the usb drive, meaning extra heat and power consumption. I now only use IMG files on my 01wfd usb floppy Emulator. 

If someone could send me a link to that usb drive that can read raw formats, that would be amazing, I would really appreciate it since I have two clunker desktops under my desk solely for the purpose of reading out old disks usb floppy drives can’t handle...

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 10:40 PM Antonio <antonioprm@...> wrote:

Just a couple of notes:

  1. For some undetermined reason, almost none of the disk images had the expected 720 KB. One had as few as 416 KB, others had as much as 736 KB. In the latter, the extra 16 KB were filled with 0xAA bytes, which is the same way a normal disk ends. I have no explanation for that, whether it's a bug with the imaging software, an issue with the floppy drive itself, or - could it be? something in the original disks. What I do know is that I only had to adjust the size to 720 KB (in some cases adding 0x00 bytes, in others trimming the length) in order for the disk images to work. There were no missing or wrong bytes (the KB that were missing from some of the disks were likely all empty). It may have helped that in all cases there was no SEQ FileB (which is in the end of the disk), but my suspicion is that if there were, its data likewise would be correctly read.

  2. I didn't use physical disks, I just put the disk images in my 01/W's gotek drive, but that's not relevant. (The firmware on the gotek (FlashFloppy) wouldn't accept the images unless they were 720 KB.)

  3. I think Devan mentioned that RawWrite didn't work correctly under Windows 10, but it worked on Vista. I can't tell because I have neither Windows nor USB floppy; I do know raw access to disk volumes has been restricted by Windows, but supposedly that started with Vista. There's always http://www.dmares.com/maresware/html/ntimage.htm but again you have to be very careful with it. I've been tempted to write a minimal graphical utility that can only READ and only if it's a floppy, but having neither Windows 10 nor one of those drives it would be too much guesswork, all the more since I'm not sure there is demand for it.

In the end it was quite easy to get this going, and it's always nice to be able to make use of the mix of old and new tech to help others out :)
krusete@...
 

I only just joined this list so apologies for butting in on the discussion and if I mentioned something already discussed. 

but I’ve had success backing up corrupted old floppies with Omniflop using a combination of slow step rate or filling bad sectors with 0’s. It’s kind of up to chance whether filling bad sectors with 0’s will keep your disk working or render the image useless. It’s helped me save a lot of almost gone forever disks, though. 



“ For some undetermined reason, almost none of the disk images had the expected 720 KB. One had as few as 416 KB, others had as much as 736 KB. In the latter, the extra 16 KB were filled with 0xAA bytes, which is the same way a normal disk ends. I have no explanation for that, whether it's a bug with the imaging software, an issue with the floppy drive itself, or - could it be? something in the original disks. ”

The 01w floppy format is a plain IBM / DOS compatible 720k disk with its own headers on top. Are you working with img files? It seems like you may be if the files themselves are 720k. I prepared a bunch of HFE format disks for my own 01wfd but later learned that due to HFE files being too big for the Gotek’s RAM, it has to constantly stream them from the usb drive, meaning extra heat and power consumption. I now only use IMG files on my 01wfd usb floppy Emulator. 

If someone could send me a link to that usb drive that can read raw formats, that would be amazing, I would really appreciate it since I have two clunker desktops under my desk solely for the purpose of reading out old disks usb floppy drives can’t handle...

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 10:40 PM Antonio <antonioprm@...> wrote:

Just a couple of notes:

  1. For some undetermined reason, almost none of the disk images had the expected 720 KB. One had as few as 416 KB, others had as much as 736 KB. In the latter, the extra 16 KB were filled with 0xAA bytes, which is the same way a normal disk ends. I have no explanation for that, whether it's a bug with the imaging software, an issue with the floppy drive itself, or - could it be? something in the original disks. What I do know is that I only had to adjust the size to 720 KB (in some cases adding 0x00 bytes, in others trimming the length) in order for the disk images to work. There were no missing or wrong bytes (the KB that were missing from some of the disks were likely all empty). It may have helped that in all cases there was no SEQ FileB (which is in the end of the disk), but my suspicion is that if there were, its data likewise would be correctly read.

  2. I didn't use physical disks, I just put the disk images in my 01/W's gotek drive, but that's not relevant. (The firmware on the gotek (FlashFloppy) wouldn't accept the images unless they were 720 KB.)

  3. I think Devan mentioned that RawWrite didn't work correctly under Windows 10, but it worked on Vista. I can't tell because I have neither Windows nor USB floppy; I do know raw access to disk volumes has been restricted by Windows, but supposedly that started with Vista. There's always http://www.dmares.com/maresware/html/ntimage.htm but again you have to be very careful with it. I've been tempted to write a minimal graphical utility that can only READ and only if it's a floppy, but having neither Windows 10 nor one of those drives it would be too much guesswork, all the more since I'm not sure there is demand for it.

In the end it was quite easy to get this going, and it's always nice to be able to make use of the mix of old and new tech to help others out :)
Antonio
 

Just a couple of notes:

  1. For some undetermined reason, almost none of the disk images had the expected 720 KB. One had as few as 416 KB, others had as much as 736 KB. In the latter, the extra 16 KB were filled with 0xAA bytes, which is the same way a normal disk ends. I have no explanation for that, whether it's a bug with the imaging software, an issue with the floppy drive itself, or - could it be? something in the original disks. What I do know is that I only had to adjust the size to 720 KB (in some cases adding 0x00 bytes, in others trimming the length) in order for the disk images to work. There were no missing or wrong bytes (the KB that were missing from some of the disks were likely all empty). It may have helped that in all cases there was no SEQ FileB (which is in the end of the disk), but my suspicion is that if there were, its data likewise would be correctly read.

  2. I didn't use physical disks, I just put the disk images in my 01/W's gotek drive, but that's not relevant. (The firmware on the gotek (FlashFloppy) wouldn't accept the images unless they were 720 KB.)

  3. I think Devan mentioned that RawWrite didn't work correctly under Windows 10, but it worked on Vista. I can't tell because I have neither Windows nor USB floppy; I do know raw access to disk volumes has been restricted by Windows, but supposedly that started with Vista. There's always http://www.dmares.com/maresware/html/ntimage.htm but again you have to be very careful with it. I've been tempted to write a minimal graphical utility that can only READ and only if it's a floppy, but having neither Windows 10 nor one of those drives it would be too much guesswork, all the more since I'm not sure there is demand for it.

In the end it was quite easy to get this going, and it's always nice to be able to make use of the mix of old and new tech to help others out :)
Devan
 

Hello!  I'm here to give a quick update regarding my request.  We have been successful and when I say we, I mostly mean Antonio.  Here's what we know:

*A Raayoo USB floppy drive works using
*RawWrite using a supported os.

So, I imaged the disks, sent the files to Antonio who proceeded to save the data to a physical disk, load it in his Korg and record the stereo out.

One thing of note is I'm almost positive one of the disks that I imaged was a disk that had no longer worked in my Korg of yore, but I had saved it in case smart people in the future could retrieve it which is what just happened.  So, maybe Antonio can expand a little more on what he did on his side.

I feel very grateful someone from this group helped me.  This has renewed a bit of optimism in the interwebs for me.  Thank you, Antonio!  Best of luck, everyone.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 1:53 AM <antonioprm@...> wrote:
Hi Devan,

Do try the RawWrite program I've mentioned.

No dia 22/03/2021, às 18:24, Devan <devanphenix@...> escreveu:


Hey. Do we know which usb drives do read raw sectors?  I'm about to test one, it's a Raayoo and cost me $30. 

On Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 8:44 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:

> The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that

I will second this. Everything I found out while trying to back up my disks indicates that most USB floppy drives can't read RAW sectors. Also, many cannot write 720kb disks.

-William 

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
Date: 3/22/21 6:20 AM (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello everyone (excuse me for my English),

I think it's the drive and not the interface. The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that.

The software had to be recompiled, just with new compiler.
Mike W are you still registered here?

Antonio
 

Hi Devan,

Do try the RawWrite program I've mentioned.

No dia 22/03/2021, às 18:24, Devan <devanphenix@...> escreveu:


Hey. Do we know which usb drives do read raw sectors?  I'm about to test one, it's a Raayoo and cost me $30. 

On Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 8:44 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:

> The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that

I will second this. Everything I found out while trying to back up my disks indicates that most USB floppy drives can't read RAW sectors. Also, many cannot write 720kb disks.

-William 

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
Date: 3/22/21 6:20 AM (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello everyone (excuse me for my English),

I think it's the drive and not the interface. The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that.

The software had to be recompiled, just with new compiler.
Mike W are you still registered here?

Devan
 

Hey. Do we know which usb drives do read raw sectors?  I'm about to test one, it's a Raayoo and cost me $30. 


On Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 8:44 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:

> The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that

I will second this. Everything I found out while trying to back up my disks indicates that most USB floppy drives can't read RAW sectors. Also, many cannot write 720kb disks.

-William 

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
Date: 3/22/21 6:20 AM (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello everyone (excuse me for my English),

I think it's the drive and not the interface. The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that.

The software had to be recompiled, just with new compiler.
Mike W are you still registered here?

o2william
 


> The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that

I will second this. Everything I found out while trying to back up my disks indicates that most USB floppy drives can't read RAW sectors. Also, many cannot write 720kb disks.

-William 

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: krzysztof.cylkowski@...
Date: 3/22/21 6:20 AM (GMT-08:00)
To: korg01w-list@groups.io
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello everyone (excuse me for my English),

I think it's the drive and not the interface. The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that.

The software had to be recompiled, just with new compiler.
Mike W are you still registered here?

Chris
 

Hello everyone (excuse me for my English),

I think it's the drive and not the interface. The drive most likely needs to read RAW sectors and not all USB devices can do that.

The software had to be recompiled, just with new compiler.
Mike W are you still registered here?
Devan
 

Thanks everyone for helping to figure this out. I'm near Sacramento. 


On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 8:29 PM <antonioprm@...> wrote:

According to https://dmares.net/maresware/html/ntimage.htm (a program I've never used and non-techs should probably not use unless they do something they shouldn't to their hard disk), Diskimag is 16-bit. That would mean it won't run on 64-bit Windows.

 

 

I presume you can use http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite 

on any Windows. JUST BE SURE TO USE THE READ TAB, not the write one. I've only used this many years ago to write a linux boot floppy, but that makes me think it does what's needed, and it has a GUI. And it's free, which Winimage is not (nothing against that, of course).
Antonio
 

According to https://dmares.net/maresware/html/ntimage.htm (a program I've never used and non-techs should probably not use unless they do something they shouldn't to their hard disk), Diskimag is 16-bit. That would mean it won't run on 64-bit Windows.

 

 

I presume you can use http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite 

on any Windows. JUST BE SURE TO USE THE READ TAB, not the write one. I've only used this many years ago to write a linux boot floppy, but that makes me think it does what's needed, and it has a GUI. And it's free, which Winimage is not (nothing against that, of course).
Antonio
 

The way data is stored in a native 01W floppy has nothing to do with the filesystems used in Windows or Mac or anywhere else. In that regard, none of those systems is able to 'open' a floppy and show what's in it. But what we're talking here is different: it refers to reading just the bytes on the disk into a 720 KB binary file, i.e. 'image'. For that, the system doesn't have to know anything about what the bytes mean. It does however need to be able to access them, and that's where I don't know if a USB floppy can deliver - though it may, because the low-level way the bytes are stored are the same as on an MSDOS floppy, it's just that the bytes themselves make no sense to anyone except a 01/W.
In short, what operating system you run makes little difference. The utility 'dd' on unix systems will do, as will Diskimag at least up to Windows XP (I haven't tried it elsewhere). What may be difficult is finding a modern computer with a classical floppy drive, because most modern motherboards don't even have support for their data cable.
For reading an Amiga or Atari ST floppy, then I'm almost certain a USB floppy won't do, because those computers often relied on creative ways of storing the bytes themselves. But I don't think the 01/W used any weird trick, so ia USB drive (which only provides the vanilla way of reading/writing bytes) may work. But then again I have no experience with any of those. What I can almost assure is that if the drive is of the classical type, with a 34 pin data cable, then any system that runs on the computer can be used to read/write floppy images.
etgalaj@...
 

Just FYI:

 

I tried to read diskettes crated on my 01WproX in the USB floppy drive connected to the PC, under Windows 10. No go…

The format of diskettes now is different than of the ones created on the synthesizer. Supposedly, you need old PC with built in floppy drive and running Windows 98 or older.

 

I am in process of installing USB floppy emulator to put it in place of the floppy drive and wanted to retrieve information from old floppies. And then copy them onto virtual diskettes in the emulator’s USB stick. I did a lot of reading and now I’m 100% sure that you can only get it on PC with Windows 98 and older. Don’t know about Mac though…

 

Tom

 

From: korg01w-list@groups.io <korg01w-list@groups.io> On Behalf Of Devan
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2021 2:16 PM
To: korg01w-list@groups.io
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

 

Hello,

 

I have not tried it yet but Antonio told me about this program...

 

 

I'm trying to track down a computer with a 3.5" drive or might get a usb one but not sure if that will still work?

 

Not sure about disc compatibility.  It's been a long time since I've messed with those discs.

 

Devan

 

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 9:19 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:

How do you image the floppies?  I have a stack of old ones I'd like to back up. I've tried using DiskImage but it keeps reporting errors (I think because I used HD floppies and it is only meant to be used with single-density).

 

Thanks,

William

 
o2william
 

I had to use DOSBox (the DOS emulator). If I run DiskImage from a command prompt it tells me it's incompatible with my 64-bit operating system.

DiskImage doesn't provide useful error messages, just something along the lines of "an error occurred." It could be that it failed to read the  double density sectors, but that may not matter. I'll have to test it.

I need to swap the battery in my 01w before I can try loading the backup.

-William 

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: antonioprm@...
Date: 3/19/21 1:13 PM (GMT-08:00)
To: korg01w-list@groups.io
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hi William,
Do you mean DOSBox or a DOS/command line proimpt? Those would be very different things.
What kinds of errors does it produce? I did use HD disks as 720 KB back in the day (and the reverse years before!), and to my surprise I've never had a problem anywhere.
Even if there are reading errors, they may not always be an issue, a large part of a Korg 01/W disk is empty space. With some luck, the errors you get may be in one of those places.
A few weeks ago I started writing a program to understand the data in 01W disks, but I've only done the easy part - listing the names of programs, combis, and songs. That's maybe 0.1% of the effort invovled, unless Krzysztof's program can come to the rescue. At any rate, all my program could do was to tell whether the names are OK; for progs/combis that may be enough, as the name and the rest of the prog/combi are surely in the same sector, but for sequences certainly not.

Antonio
 

Re what can be done with a 01W file.... you can load it into a 01/W and that's pretty much it. Then you may be able to get MIDI from the 01/W, but bear in mind that it doesn't have much resemblance to what is called 'General MIDI'. Especially the percussion will be almost surely unusable, unless you have the heart to do extensive remapping.

Creating disk images is great as a backup, as versioning, and as a medium for whoever now uses a Gotek floppy replacement.
Antonio
 

Hi William,
Do you mean DOSBox or a DOS/command line proimpt? Those would be very different things.
What kinds of errors does it produce? I did use HD disks as 720 KB back in the day (and the reverse years before!), and to my surprise I've never had a problem anywhere.
Even if there are reading errors, they may not always be an issue, a large part of a Korg 01/W disk is empty space. With some luck, the errors you get may be in one of those places.
A few weeks ago I started writing a program to understand the data in 01W disks, but I've only done the easy part - listing the names of programs, combis, and songs. That's maybe 0.1% of the effort invovled, unless Krzysztof's program can come to the rescue. At any rate, all my program could do was to tell whether the names are OK; for progs/combis that may be enough, as the name and the rest of the prog/combi are surely in the same sector, but for sequences certainly not.
Antonio
 

Hi Krzysztof,
Let's keep issues separate. Your Disk -> SysEx conversion program sounds simply great. Don't you wish to start a new thread about it? I would certainly be interested in making it work with modern computers. I'm not much into C, but I can find my way around it. Let's keep talking about it.
Devan
 

I'm not sure. We don't know it worked until you can load a blank disc with the 720 of data, load it and see if the korg can read it correctly, I think.  Antonio also mentioned a program called winimage...


On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 12:33 PM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:
That's the program I tried yesterday. It does work with a USB floppy, but on my Windows 10 PC I had to run it under the DosBox emulator.

The program saved a 720kb RAW file, although it spit out generic error messages while doing so.  So I'm not sure if the RAW file is useable or what I can even do with it if so.  I wonder if it can be converted to MIDI format.

-William



Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: Devan <devanphenix@...>
Date: 3/19/21 11:16 AM (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello,

I have not tried it yet but Antonio told me about this program...


I'm trying to track down a computer with a 3.5" drive or might get a usb one but not sure if that will still work?

Not sure about disc compatibility.  It's been a long time since I've messed with those discs.

Devan

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 9:19 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:
How do you image the floppies?  I have a stack of old ones I'd like to back up. I've tried using DiskImage but it keeps reporting errors (I think because I used HD floppies and it is only meant to be used with single-density).

Thanks,
William
o2william
 

That's the program I tried yesterday. It does work with a USB floppy, but on my Windows 10 PC I had to run it under the DosBox emulator.

The program saved a 720kb RAW file, although it spit out generic error messages while doing so.  So I'm not sure if the RAW file is useable or what I can even do with it if so.  I wonder if it can be converted to MIDI format.

-William



Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: Devan <devanphenix@...>
Date: 3/19/21 11:16 AM (GMT-08:00)
To: korg01w-list@groups.io
Subject: Re: [korg01w-list] Sequence Bounce Request

Hello,

I have not tried it yet but Antonio told me about this program...


I'm trying to track down a computer with a 3.5" drive or might get a usb one but not sure if that will still work?

Not sure about disc compatibility.  It's been a long time since I've messed with those discs.

Devan

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 9:19 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:
How do you image the floppies?  I have a stack of old ones I'd like to back up. I've tried using DiskImage but it keeps reporting errors (I think because I used HD floppies and it is only meant to be used with single-density).

Thanks,
William
Devan
 


On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 9:19 AM <krzysztof.cylkowski@...> wrote:
Hi everyone,

You'll have to excuse me for my English...
If it helps you, I wrote a program years ago that extracts the data as SYS-EX (and RAW Data) from a Korg Disk Image file. I still have to see if I can compile it with the current compiler. The program can't do everything but I could extend it with your help. My 01W is not running anymore, so unfortunately I can't test it. Currently the program can read Combi and Prog. To recognize SEQ and Global as SYS-EX, someone with a 01W FD content had to transfer an Image Disk to Keyboard and with a program save the single areas (PROG, GLOBAL, COMBI, SEQ) as SYS-EX on a PC. Then email me (disk image and the SYS-EX) and I'll see what else I can recognize with my software. Should not be difficult. Does anyone want to help or test the current version already?

Best regards
Chris

Devan
 

Hello,

I have not tried it yet but Antonio told me about this program...


I'm trying to track down a computer with a 3.5" drive or might get a usb one but not sure if that will still work?

Not sure about disc compatibility.  It's been a long time since I've messed with those discs.

Devan

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 9:19 AM o2william <o2william@...> wrote:
How do you image the floppies?  I have a stack of old ones I'd like to back up. I've tried using DiskImage but it keeps reporting errors (I think because I used HD floppies and it is only meant to be used with single-density).

Thanks,
William

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