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Winimage question

falter

falter

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Jan 22, 2011
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I am trying to make an image of a boot disk for my JVF Signboard (pics here) before it dies.

The disk seems to read fine, I can copy all files off. But when I run winimage (ver 6), after it (I think) copies the files, it reads the rest of the disk as errors. Is that normal? Is it because it's trying to read empty space or something?

I tried version 8 (this is a win 98 SE thinkpad 380XD), and it did the errors all the way through.. had to keep hitting ignore.

It's an interesting machine - it's a 386 with a custom video card that drives the LEDs. If you boot the software on a regular windows PC it still works - it basically goes into a funny display mode: https://drive.google.com/file/d/162-039atLW-Uue2amCajgBSmrGOiUi8g/view?usp=sharing

If one could reverse engineer the 'driver', you could probably put whatever you wanted (that fit) up on the LEDs.
 
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Some "shortcut" disk duplicators only formatted out to the end of data, leaving the remainder of the disk unformatted. Saved a lot of time, particularly when the disk was less than half-full.
 
I've also seen a few instances where a disk was apparently formatted in a drive that is faulty somehow, but they manage to write the data to the disk OK in some other drive. Then those data tracks read fine, but the unused tracks are full of read errors.

With a flux level dumping device, it is easy to see what is going on.

Anyway, this kind of thing is NOT normal, but it happens. Without a flux level dumping device you will have to manually verify that the files you read are in fact OK, and that you are not actually dealing with copy protection.
 
Thank you! Yeah this wouldn't be copy protection.. this is a disk that was made by a fellow that was helping me figure out how to boot up and use the sign. It's just a standard DOS disk with unprotected slideshow and editing software files. I'm not sure what a Flux level dumping device is.. but I'm guessing my thinkpad's floppy drive doesn't count as such.
 
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