I realize that this is a long shot, but here goes: Is there a way that I
can use old 5 1/4" floppy discs with my computer? You see, I have a lot of
the old, formatted floppies that were given to me about 8 years ago when I
had a Commodore 64, which I would have reformatted to use in that computer.
I have Windows ME operating system with a 3 1/2" floppy drive and I would
hate to just throw them away.

Any help is appreciated; thanks in advance.

Christine

Christine Geary Spilled my beer when they jumped on the table and
proclaimed in <2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net>:

Honestly, if they've been sitting around for that long, chances are
they have deteriorated quite a bit and are unuseable...

NOI

Unless there's valuable data on those floppies that you must retrieve,
it will be more trouble than it's worth. You'll need to sacrifice a
full width slot in your case, and the media on the old floppies may no
longer be reliable.

Christine Geary wrote:

X-No-Archive: Yes

In news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net,
Christine Geary <cgeary@epix.net> typed
|| I realize that this is a long shot, but here goes: Is there a way
|| that I can use old 5 1/4" floppy discs with my computer? You see, I
|| have a lot of the old, formatted floppies that were given to me
|| about 8 years ago when I had a Commodore 64, which I would have
|| reformatted to use in that computer. I have Windows ME operating
|| system with a 3 1/2" floppy drive and I would hate to just throw
|| them away.

I think the only real drawback you'll come across is finding a suitable data
cable for the drive, if you don't already have one with the drive. It
doesn't use the same connector as a 3.5" drive. You could probably pick one
up at a 2nd hand computer market or similar.

Really not worth the trouble, though, it's probably only a 360KB drive /
disks anyway.




---
Message has been scanned and is, to the best of my knowledge, Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 2/09/2003

"Christine Geary" <cgeary@epix.net> wrote in
news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net:


If you reformatted them to work in a C64, they are not going to work in
Windows.

oh man wheres that copy of Liesure suit larry?

You know.......I just loaded that game using the51/4 and low and behold it works lucky i found the book with the phone
numbers.....anyway these are a good 17 years old and most of them work PC TOOLS PROCOMM betas heheh LOL ROF...why do i have
this stuff.... thrift store and buy one of those poor 486ers


"Christine Geary" <cgeary@epix.net> wrote in message news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net...

I have Windows ME operating system with a 3
Don't! give them to me.....no Not Dont give them to me....i mean......

If you reformatted them to work in a C64, they are not going to work in
heh missed that....yer perty smert fer a donit


"donut" <none@none.com> wrote in message news:Xns93EE9CAC8EE95donut@216.102.43.227...

Christine Geary wrote:
You don't need to *throw* the 5.25 floppys away, you can just gently place
them in the rubbish bin.
Nice try though (green thing an all that), the practicality though is nil
(for just the value of the disks).
I threw a few hundred or something away a year ago (used to run a BBC B
(Beeb))
I've about a hundred 720k 3.5 floppys at the moment, I'd probably be better
of throwing (putting) these in the rubbish bin.

"Christine Geary" <cgeary@epix.net> wrote in message
news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net...
i have one in my machine for reading old dos discs
although many have died...i still have a few 15 years old that are fine

however i don't know if you can read any floppies made on a c64

you may want to ask on www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/helpline

"donut" <none@none.com> wrote in message
news:Xns93EE9CAC8EE95donut@216.102.43.227...
==> Hey, you the same donut that used to frequent the old Lockergnome
IRC?

--
Phil

\\\///
( o o )
--------oOOO-- ( )--OOOo------
pgregory@c.tel.net

Howdy!

"Christine Geary" <cgeary@epix.net> wrote in message
news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net...
Do you want to pull the data off of them? Or just use them?

If the former, you'll need a Commodore 64. If the latter - you can
buy a batch of 3.5" floppy disks for what a good 5.25" USED floppy disk
drive will run you ..

RwP

In article <2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net>, cgeary@epix.net says...
and reformat the disks. You could use FDFormat to increase the capacity of
the disks (search for it on Google, it's free). As others have pointed out,
it's probably not worth the trouble.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. do you still have your old 1541
C64 drive?

It is technically impossible to read a 1541 disk in a PC diskdrive. The
reason is that PC and 1541 uses completely different systems for magnetic
recording, MFM versus GCR. Note also that the original 1541 is much more
than just a disk drive, in fact it is a complete computer, with its own CPU
and RAM/ROM. The PC's diskdrive is just mechanics with simple read/write
electronics, with no intelligence of its own.

BUT... You can connect a 1542 drive to your pc using a din to seriel
connector. you wil then need a Commodore 64 Emulator
(http://viceteam.bei.t-online.de/) <--- from here.


Ok on the 5.25" format, there are a few ways of doing this. You need
something that can physically read the 5.25" disk.
Null modemThis applies to PC, Mac, Linux box or whatever - I'll stick to PC
as that's what relevant to 99% of you anyway)
Connect the PC to the C64 via a null modem connection (typically a serial
cable and a Null modem). Now hook up a terminal program in both ends and
fire away using any of the file transfer protocols available in both ends.
Hardware: You need both a C64, a 15x1 and a null modem cable
Advantage: Easy to set up
Disadvantages: You'll be doing it till hell freezes if you want to do more
than just a few files

X 1541 cableHook up the C1541 disk drive to the PC using a X-1541 interface
(it's just a cable - easy to solder even if you aren't born with five thumbs
on each hand)
Using the programs StarCommander or Trans64 you can transfer the data to the
PC in a blizz. StarCommander is still developed and allows you to do all
sorts of nice things, including picking individual files from the disk and
copying them to the PC in any form you want, converted on the fly.
Hardware: You need a 15x1 diskdrive and the X1541 cable
Advantages: Fast, reliable and flexible
Disadvantages: It simply won't work on all machines and getting a working
1541 drive might cause problems.

CatweaselThis is an interface that allows you to hook på standard PC 3.5"
and 5.25" drives and in the process they are suddenly able to read just
about every disk format ever created. Amazing piece of hardware.
Hardware: The catweasel and a PC 5.25" disk drive
Advantages: The fastest solution and the drives are really cheap if you find
them
Disadvantages: Costy and the software support is not perfected as
StarCommander.

Assuming you ported the data there are two ways to go on;
Run the original program in an emulatorWill always work. You can even set
the speed to the maximum of what your system can cope with so it could be
conciderably much faster than it was on the original C64. Note that VICE is
available in C128 mode as well so wordprocessors in this system can also be
emulated.
Advantages: Given that you have the program that created the original text,
this works great
Disadvantages: You typically must have a cracked copy of your words
processor, or it doesn't work on the emulator.

Convert the document(s) and edit on any other WordprocessorLet's face it -
wordprocessors on the PC are SOOO much better than they used to be on the
C64! If you convert your old texts to a format that is PC readable, then you
have fully migrated into a slightly more sustainable environment.
Advantages: Take full advantage of the newer system
Disadvantages: You must be able to convert the old text into a newer format.
How to convert it? Well, I am not aware of any good way of doing it on the
PC so you simply have to do it on the native c64. Sometimes the
wordprocessors have the option of saving the files in plain text format -
you lose all the formatting, but you have all the text as written.
If you're lucky, you've written your texts in a format that is readable by
Gnylf, a very handy program written by the good friend Linus Walleij. It
runs on the C64 but could very well be run under on of the emulators.

How do I play games in the emulator?
The long storyWhat meets you when you boot a Commodore64 is not a shell,
like MS-DOS or Unix, but a screen editor From it you can enter basic
statements, but also issue DOS commands. You can freely walk with the
cursor, alter the line you're on and then press return to issue the command.
The Commodore DOS features "devices", where the screen is device 0, tape is
1, a printer 4 or 5 and disk drives normally 8, 9, 10 or 11. To load a file
from a device has the general syntax:
LOAD ["filename"][,device][,absolute address]
The system from boot-up assumes that input device is tape and output device
is screen, which means that you do not specify the device if you want to
load from tape. Also the "absolute address" parameter can be 0 or 1 where
"0" means "load to basic" (default) and "1" means "load to the address
specified in the file".
So if you want to load from tape you just need to issue the command LOAD.
This loads the next file from tape. In the world of emulator, this means
that you want to load from a T64 or TAP file. You can issue the same command
more specific; LOAD "*",1 ... This means "Load the first file you find with
any name, from the tape device - i.e. device 1"
To load from a disk (which is a D64 file in the world of emulators), you
cannot just issue LOAD but need to add the device indicator (or you have
stated you want to load from tape). So issuing the command LOAD"*",8 means
that you want to load the file that appear in the disks table of contents
(called the "directory"). So what about all the other files on the disk -
how can you see them?
To load the directory you issue LOAD"$",8 followed by LIST. There you see
the contents. Files with the file type PRG can normally be loaded by issuing
LOAD"filename",8. If the directory is longer than a screen you risk missing
the first files, but you can halt the output using the key CTRL and abort
using the key Run/Stop.
If you have the directory on the screen, you can use the screen editor to
walk up the screen and type LOAD before the filename (on top of the length
reference) and walk passed the filename and type ,8: after the closing
quotation mark. The colon means "end of statement" and is only placed there
to prevent the PRG reference to be parsed as a command.
Finally; You have to run the program loaded, which is done using the RUN
command.

The short story To load from tape, issue LOAD
From disk, issue LOAD"*",8
Then type RUN to run the program
Also; In most emulators you get a menu of the contents, where you can select
a file which is then loaded and executed.

Hope this helps.


--
----------------------------------------------------------
Micron

http://www.experiencewindows.com
Professional Help & Support

----------------------------------------------------------


"Christine Geary" <cgeary@epix.net> wrote in message
news:2Ms6b.3220$Bv6.959846@news1.epix.net...

Holy Crap!!!!!!! is all i have to say

"Micron" <michael_knight@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:Bcy6b.29552$PB1.26791@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk...

Sure, finding an 5.25 drive isn't that hard, but the real issue will be
the disks. After that long chances are they're going to be DOA.

Mike
Block Banner Ads Now
http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

Christine Geary wrote:

????

--
----------------------------------------------------------
Micron

http://www.experiencewindows.com
Professional Help & Support

----------------------------------------------------------


"JAD" <jdemma25@eartink.net> wrote in message
news:ehy6b.4105$BG6.3028@newsread1.news.atl.earthl ink.net...

"PhilGreg" <p.gregory@ctel.net> wrote in
news:vll11v71je2ofb@corp.supernews.com:

Nope, not me.

Hello donut,

Sunday, September 7, 2003, 5:26:40 AM, you wrote:

d> "PhilGreg" <p.gregory@ctel.net> wrote in
d> news:vll11v71je2ofb@corp.supernews.com:

d> Nope, not me.



--
Best regards,
news mailto:mike@thompsonmike.co.uk

The floppies haven't been reformatted; they were formatted to be used in a
PC.

Christine

I want to just use them; they're already formatted to work in a PC-type
computer.

Christine