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DOS floppy imaging software that will create an IMA disk image?

LiqMatrix

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Nov 2, 2017
Messages
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I am used to using WinImage and prefer the IMA disk image format. This makes it easy for me to see what size disk the original data came from. Question: Is there a DOS based floppy imaging tool that will image a floppy in the IMA file format like WinImage? Thanks for any help.
 
rawread, firm, and almost any other, as IMA is just a raw sector dump and not a special format. Same "format" you get with dd on Linux.
 
Ok. Sounds good. I am not familiar with all the DOS imaging software out there so glad I asked.
 
Sure, there are other software packages to do what you are wanting from DOS, a Win98 Computer running in DOS mode.

https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/10444/winworld-archive-format-information


You will find the following media types inside the Winworld archives:

TD0

TD0 files are Teledisk floppy disk images. Use Teledisk to write these. Teledisk requires an IBM PC compatible running DOS or Win9x. This format is similar to ImageDisk, but is older and less open. ImageDisk can convert most TD0 files to IMD format.

Teledisk is sometimes used for non-DOS disks and MS/PC-DOS 1.x formatted disks. It also duplicates some primitive copy protection schemes.

The HxC Disk tool can convert Teledisk files for writing using a Kryoflux or SuperCard Pro.



IMD

IMD files are ImageDisk floppy disk images. Use the ImageDisk utility to write these. ImageDisk requires an IBM PC compatible running DOS or Win9x.

On Winworld, ImageDisk files are used for non-DOS disks and MS/PC-DOS 1.x formatted disks. It also duplicates some primitive copy protection schemes.

It is possible to convert standard IBM PC .IMG/.IMA raw sector images to ImageDisk format. See this forum post on How to Convert RAW images to ImageDisk

The HxC disk tool can convert ImageDisk files for writing using a Kryoflux or SuperCard Pro.



IMG/IMA/DSK/IMZ

.IMG/.IMA/.DSK files are "raw sector" images of standard DOS and Windows 360K, 720K, 1.2mb, 1.44mb, and DMF 1.7MB format floppy disks. You may mount them directly in an emulator or write them to a floppy disk using one of the following tools:

WinImage
Rawrite32
DskImage for DOS

There are many other tools that support raw sector images.

.IMZ files are compressed WinImage files. Most emulators or disk tools don't support these. WinImage will open and convert them. These are technically just "Zip" files, a Zip utility will also extract the stored "IMA" image.


Note: You may convert between many of the different floppy disk image types below using the HxC Disk Tools.


Larry
 
If you download Imagedisk (IMD) Version 1.18 by Dave Dunfield, it contains several utilities.
TD02IMD
BIN2IMD
IMDA
IMDU
IMDV
ANY2IMD
DMK2IMD
TESTFDC


For converting a .TD0 File to .RAW (Sector Dump)

I use a Batch file named:

A.BAT

TD02IMD KAYPRO1.TD0 > KAYPRO1.TXT

IMDA KAYPRO1.IMD >> KAYPRO1.TXT

IMDU KAYPRO1.IMD KAYPRO1.RAW /B /E /D >> KAYPRO1.TXT




For Converting a .IMD File to .RAW (Sector Dump)

I use a Batch file named:

B.BAT

IMDA KAYPRO2.IMD > KAYPRO2.TXT

IMDU KAYPRO2.IMD KAYPRO2.RAW /B /E /D >> KAYPRO2.TXT



Then read both files KAYPRO1.TXT and KAYPRO2.TXT

That will give you lots of good information on the structure of the .RAW Image.

From there cpmtools or cmptools built with libdsk can get a directory listing
and read or write to the .RAW image.

cpmtools tutorial located at:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=112244

To get the .RAW image back to .IMD format you will use BIN2IMD. with an updated .IMD image
you can write an Updated Floppy.



There is also:

SAMDISK
https://simonowen.com/samdisk/


HxC
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_....html#download

LINUX
https://sourceforge.net/p/hxcfloppyemu/code/HEAD/tree/


The HxC software can convert and EXPORT a lot of different types of formatted Images.


NOTE: Two things that you need to be aware of are 1. Dave Dunfield has a newer version
of BIN2IMD that is not on his website yet. You will likely want that version as the previous
version has a BUG. 2. You need to make sure to use cpmtools 2.23-snapshot as
it has the new Kaypro stanza dirblks 2 or dirblks 4 to prevent the boot sector from getting
clobbered when cpmtools writes to the image. This only applies to the KAYPRO Definitions.

Larry
 
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DskImage for DOS (referenced above) is the imaging tool that I wrote.

The world did not need another imaging tool at the time, but I needed something that was more aggressive about retrying transient errors on older floppy disks. Therefore, the program allows you to set the number of retries via an environment variable, and I found that was able to allow me to get good images of diskettes that other programs were having problems with. (Up to 10 retries per bad sector are allowed.)

Of course it works on a PCjr or any other DOS machine.
 
DskImage for DOS (referenced above) is the imaging tool that I wrote.

The world did not need another imaging tool at the time, but I needed something that was more aggressive about retrying transient errors on older floppy disks. Therefore, the program allows you to set the number of retries via an environment variable, and I found that was able to allow me to get good images of diskettes that other programs were having problems with. (Up to 10 retries per bad sector are allowed.)

Of course it works on a PCjr or any other DOS machine.

DskImage is a tool which I keep in my back pocket at all times now. Right before I read your post here I had just finished imaging 12 sad old diskettes so that I could archive them, and write them to some NOS diskettes. I am new here and wanted to say thanks for such a reliable tool.
 
DskImage is a tool which I keep in my back pocket at all times now. Right before I read your post here I had just finished imaging 12 sad old diskettes so that I could archive them, and write them to some NOS diskettes. I am new here and wanted to say thanks for such a reliable tool.

Thanks. I finally got around to posting the source code for it. See http://www.brutman.com/DskImage/ if you are interested.


-Mike
 
DskImage for DOS (referenced above) is the imaging tool that I wrote.

The world did not need another imaging tool at the time, but I needed something that was more aggressive about retrying transient errors on older floppy disks. Therefore, the program allows you to set the number of retries via an environment variable, and I found that was able to allow me to get good images of diskettes that other programs were having problems with. (Up to 10 retries per bad sector are allowed.)

Of course it works on a PCjr or any other DOS machine.

DskImage worked perfect. Will definitely keep that handy for future imaging in DOS. One thing I like about WinImage is that it stops on disk errors which allows me to pop it out and do the "shake & blow" method on a disk to get it reading again. Then I can just pop it back in and resume from the error. That method has limped me through quite a few dusty/iffy disks.
 
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