Imaging using Makedisk 1.5 on XP

ARCHIVING ON WINDOWS XP/2000.

MAKEDISK 1.5

There is some rumors reporting many troubles with Makedisk under Windows 2000/XP. They are not true. This program works very well with recent versions of Windows.

Makedisk creates MSA or ST files, which are recognized by all emulators: Steem, SainT, WinSTon, Stew, PaCifiST, Echo...

  1. Here is how to use Makedisk 1.5: boot on MS-DOS. Don't open prompt MS-DOS, use the real MS-DOS.
  2. in order to use MS-DOS with Windows 2000/XP, there is a simple way. Format a blank disk with Windows and use the option named "Create a boot disk MS-DOS". There is no need to install older versions of Windows nor to get MS-DOS 6.22. Just format a blank disk.
  3. once the computer runs under MS-DOS, go to the directory with Makedisk on it. Try this command line for instance:
     CD C:\MAKEDISK
  4. insert the floppy you want to image
  5. then just enter the following parameters:
     MAKEDISK /READ DISK.ST /AUTO
  6. the program will detect automatically the correct parameters of the disk and it generates an image named DISK.ST
  7. you finished!

Please note 1: PC drives can't read disks with 11 sectors. But it most of the atari floppies were formatted with 9 or 10 sectors, so Makedisk is useful most of the time. If you have disks formatted with 11 sectors, contact me (see adress at the bottom of the page).

Please note 2: in a minor case, Makedisk can't detect the correct parameters (because the disk is formatted with both single sides, weird!). In this case you will have to enter the settings manually. For instance: MAKEDISK /READ DISK.ST /TRACK 82 /SECTOR 10 /SIDE 2