Wfdcopy
Documentation for "Windows Floppy Disk Copy" (wfdcopy) v1.02
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Copyright (c) 2000-2002, Hervé PARISSI <hparissi@laposte.net>
http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=8584
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wfdcopy/
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This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
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1) LICENSE
----------
wfdcopy is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
See the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for details.
2) OVERVIEW
-----------
wfdcopy is a floppy disk image maker for Windows, its main purpose is to read
floppy disks into image-files but it can be used to write them back or to copy
a disk (be warned that these features aren't working fine, see below).
I wrote it mainly to convert floppy disks into image-files for use in emulators,
especially Atari ST emulators (that why the filename extension is ".st" by
default).
It should read any Atari ST and PC disks, including "overformatted" ST disks.
Warning: if you have something else than a *real* 3"1/2 1.44Mb floppy drive
then your drive is not supported and wfdcopy may not work properly.
wfdcopy works under any 32-bit version of Windows.
Requirements:
- Any PC running Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP (including i386 : I've tested it)
- 8 Mb RAM
- a 3"1/2 floppy drive
- some hard-disk space (2 Mb should be enough)
Read Section 7 for informations on running wfdcopy under Windows NT/2000/XP.
Read Section 8 if you want to compile the sources.
3) USAGE
--------
Launch wfdcopy.exe, you should see a window with a big box splitted in several
parts: it's the progression bar.
The higher half corresponds to the 1st side of the disk, the lower part to the
2nd side, the little bars corresponds to each tracks.
There are 5 pushbuttons: "Disk-to-file", "File-to-disk", "Copy", "About" and
"Exit" (which turns into "Cancel" while reading/writing/copying).
It's a good idea to put the floppy disk in the drive *before* pressing
"Disk-to-file" and "Copy" (it's good too to do so before "File-to-disk") since
the program will access the floppy to read its 1st sector.
3a) "Disk-to-file"
-----------------
The most advanced feature of this program! ;-)
It begins by reading the boot sector (1st sector of the disk) to find out the
disk geometry (number of sides, tracks, sectors/tracks). You'll see an error
message "Insert floppy disk" if you didn't put a disk into the drive.
You should see an error like "disk changed (floppy)" too, you can ignore it
and go on.
You may have a Abort-Retry-Ignore Error message, that means wfdcopy didn't
read the boot sector correctly. Choosing "Abort" aborts the whole operation,
choosing "Retry" makes wfdcopy re-read the boot sector, and "Ignore"
makes wfdcopy ignore the error and go on (be warned that, then, the disk
geometry may be wrong).
Then you see the "Floppy parameters" dialog box (see below, section 4)
You shouldn't have to change anything unless you know what you're doing.
Then the program asks you for a file where the read disk will be put so you
will need as much disk-space as the size of the floppy to hold it.
Note: don't try to put the file on the floppy, it's surely not big enough ;-)
and it's really no good idea (but you're free... just do not complain)
After that, the read process should begin, you will see the progression in the,
well, progression bar (see below, section 6, for the meaning of the colors).
3b) "File-to-disk"
------------------
Just the opposite of "Disk-to-file", it asks for a file then tries to figure
out the disk geometry from the 1st 512 bytes (boot-sector) of the file then
asks you for "Floppy parameters" (see below, section 4).
The file should be a valid floppy disk image or else you'll end up with a
strange disk (but if you know what you're doing, you can put any file on a
floppy disk, just like under unices).
Since formatting doesn't work well (or at all), you should use a floppy disk
already formatted with the *same* geometry as the source disk.
3c) "Copy"
----------
It's just a combination of "Disk-to-file" and "File-to-disk", using a temporary
file (so you will need enough disk-space in your temporary folder to hold the
disk).
3d) "About"
-----------
Well, a "nice" about dialog box...
3e) "Exit"
----------
Are you surprised if I tell you that you can press this to exit wfdcopy ?
Well, Alt+F4 or pressing the 'X' box will do the same !
3f) "Cancel"
------------
While in operation, the "Exit" button turns into a "Cancel" button, so it just
cancels any operation ("Disk-to-file", "File-to-disk", "Copy") straightforward.
For instance, if you were reading a disk, you will have an unfinished file,
likewise, if you were writing a disk, you will have an unfinished disk (that's
quite more annoying...)
4) "Floppy parameters" dialog-box
---------------------------------
4a) "Tracks"
tracks/side (should be between 80 and 85)
4b) "Sectors"
sectors/tracks (should be between 9 to 12 for 720k disk, 18 to 21 for 1.44M
disks)
4c) "Heads"
sides/disk (1 or 2)
4d) "Attempts"
number of read/format/write attempts before considering an error (see
below, section 5) (should be at least 3)
4e) "Slow Mode (sector mode)"
by default, wfdcopy reads/writes the disk track-by-track, if checked,
wfdcopy reads/writes the disk sector-by-sector which is slower but safer
since if there's a bad sector in a track and this option is not checked,
the whole track is marked as bad
4f) "Auto-Ignore errors"
if unchecked any errors will be submited for an "Abort/Retry/Ignore"
message-box, if checked any errors will be ignored
4g) "Format floppy" ("File-to-disk" and "Copy" only)
if checked, format the destination floppy (left this unchecked since
IT DOES NOT WORK!)
5) About "attempts"
-------------------
Most programs (including OSes) have an assumption: "if I can't read it the 1st
time, I couldn't read it at all" (well some programs make 3 attempts), wfdcopy
just doesn't have this assumption, instead it assumes "if I can't read it the
1st time, I try again some more times until it works or a certain amount of
attempts has been done".
That's the use of the "attempts" option: to specify how many times a sector or
track (depending on the "slow-mode" option) is read/write before marking it as
"bad". And yes, it sometimes works : I've managed to read some bad disks with
this.
By default, 10 attempts are made, it should be enough, but you should play with
it. And don't forget that if you have a bad sector/track the 1st time you read
a disk, you should retry with the "slow-mode" option and/or more attempts to
get the most "good" sectors out of your disk.
6) What do the colors in the progress bar mean ?
------------------------------------------------
- "Light Green" means "read ok"
- "Green" means "write ok"
- "Blue" means "format ok"
- "Red" means "bad read/format/write"
And yes, I'm aware that there are few cosmetic bugs in the progress bar.
7) Running wfdcopy under Windows NT/Windows 2000/XP
---------------------------------------------------
You'd better use wfdcopy under Windows 9x since floppy access is faster (and
maybe more reliable ?) than under Windows NT/2000/XP. But don't worry, it
works smoothly under Windows NT/2000/XP.
Under NT/2000/XP formatting 720k and 1.44M disks works but it's NOT WORKING for
non-standard disks with more than 9 sectors/track (double-density) or 18
sectors/track (high density), and it may not work for disk with more than 80
tracks.
Error handling is still quite crude so there might be some problems with this
too.
8a) COMPILING
------------
I've used MingW32 (gcc 2.95.3) to compile wfdcopy, find it at
http://www.mingw.org, http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32,
and you can use CygWin too, http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ (since it can
compile Mingw32 projects), but CygWin support is rather untested.
MingW32 is the only development environment that I support.
Oh, by the way, I use VIM (http://www.vim.org) as an editor.
8b) UNSUPPORTED COMPILERS
-------------------------
- You can also use LCC-Win32 from http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32 or
http://ps.qss.cz/lcc but it doesn't seem to evolve much
- You can also use Borland C++ 5.5 (freely available, check
http://www.borland.com) but I don't recommend it at all
- You can also use Watcom C++ (as found at http://www.openwatcom.org/) but I
didn't test it yet and the Makefile for it isn't correct
- You can also use Visual C++ if you're rich enough but it'll never ever be
supported: we got FREE compilers so why bother for the worst and most
expensive one ?
- Any other compiler *may* work, but I just don't know them.
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