32-bit acorn software: other • Re: RISC OS 3 1/2 Floppies Discs

I have approximately 500 RISC OS floppy disc that I would very much like to archive, what is the best way to go about this and how easy or hard will this be.

I'm currently running RISC OS 5.28 on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB RAM.

Thank you.

I'd echo what Daniel's said about the Greaseweazle. It's about the best tool for the job. The only catch is it doesn't auto-detect which Acorn format the disks are in.

I've found that the best way to save time is to image the disks in "SCP" format - which is a low-level "flux" image:And then you can use the "convert" command to make an image you can use in an emulator:The beauty of this method is that you can try different settings on the Greaseweazle software until the disk reads correctly.

If your disks are good quality and were stored in a clean, dry environment (say, in a cupboard in the house) then they should be fine. If they've been stored somewhere like a loft or a shed, then do let us know as there are a few extra steps you might want to take so as not to damage the disks or the drive.

In any case, I'd try your disk drive with a not-so-important but known working disk first, just in case.

Statistics: Posted by philpem — Wed Feb 05, 2025 9:39 pm

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