archaic floppy disc format

In message "tg"
was claimed to have wrote:

I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

Unfortunately it looks like that unit used a special 240k floppy format
that isn't readable by modern hardware.

O

The old DOS debug will do it too, provided the sectors are 512
bytes. 8" SSSD floppies probably have 128 byte sectors.

Very "interesting" but it is very doubtful that the OP has an 8"
floppy drive on his PC. Also, by 1984, 8" floppies were no longer
being built into desktop systems or pretty much any systems.

Sony introduced the 3.5" floppy format around 1981, and by 1984, it
was the most popular format on new systems.

On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:02:50 -0000 "tg" wrote
in Message id: :

I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

Have a look at http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
I've used it successfully for many different formats, including HP LIF
format used in their test equipment. The only disk I was unable to
duplicate was the boot disk for a HP 4145B semiconductor analyzer.

In article , wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:55:18 -0500, PS put finger
to keyboard and composed:

tg wrote:
I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.


This url has some useful info on your problem;
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=50632
Unfortunately it seems you have 240KB disks which no one seems to be
able to deal with.

Some photos:
http://matux.kilu.de/Brother/

The machine appears to date from around 1984 and uses 3.5" lo-den
diskettes. Does it make sense for Brother to have formatted a 720KB
diskette with only 240KB capacity ???

- Franc Zabkar
It was a single sided 3.5" disk format .


The ST computers used a single sided drive at first at 360K then went DS/DD
720K later on and the went DS/HD 1.44 at the end.

This is a SWAG reply, but with a machine capable of DOS and an early
version of Norton Utilities I would suspect that you could read the
indivual sectors and possibly piece together what you need.

In any case, you will need something that can do individual sectors.
You probably could do it with the DOS based machine language by
manipulating the controller for disk, track, and sector.

It will be an education.

On Feb 25, 7:04*pm, (GMAN) wrote:
In article , wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:55:18 -0500, PS put finger
to keyboard and composed:

tg wrote:
I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

This url has some useful info on your problem;
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=50632
Unfortunately it seems you have 240KB disks which no one seems to be
able to deal with.

Some photos:
http://matux.kilu.de/Brother/

The machine appears to date from around 1984 and uses 3.5" lo-den
diskettes. Does it make sense for Brother to have formatted a 720KB
diskette with only 240KB capacity ???

- Franc Zabkar

It was a single sided 3.5" disk format .

The ST computers used a single sided drive at first at 360K then went DS/DD
720K later on and the went DS/HD 1.44 at the end.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There were several 3.5" Brother disks that are completely non
standard. You will not read them at all with standard disk
controllers

One had 1296 byte sectors and another had 12 x 256 byte GCR sectors

The only way to read them is either on the original Brother system or
a mult-media disk converter, such as InterMedia/Lynx Converter, or
Shaffstel

Michael

On Feb 25, 10:27*am, JW wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:02:50 -0000 "tg" wrote
in Message id: :

I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

Have a look athttp://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
I've used it successfully for many different formats, including HP LIF
format used in their test equipment. The only disk I was unable to
duplicate was the boot disk for a HP 4145B semiconductor analyzer.

The Omniflop does not appear to support GCR and non IBM sectored
disks. It uses standard hardware and this will not work for Brother
disks
Michael

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage wrote:
On Feb 25, 7:04?pm, (GMAN) wrote:
In article , wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:55:18 -0500, PS put finger
to keyboard and composed:

tg wrote:
I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

This url has some useful info on your problem;
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=50632
Unfortunately it seems you have 240KB disks which no one seems to be
able to deal with.

Some photos:
http://matux.kilu.de/Brother/

The machine appears to date from around 1984 and uses 3.5" lo-den
diskettes. Does it make sense for Brother to have formatted a 720KB
diskette with only 240KB capacity ???

- Franc Zabkar

It was a single sided 3.5" disk format .

The ST computers used a single sided drive at first at 360K then went DS/DD
720K later on and the went DS/HD 1.44 at the end.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There were several 3.5" Brother disks that are completely non
standard. You will not read them at all with standard disk
controllers

One had 1296 byte sectors and another had 12 x 256 byte GCR sectors

The only way to read them is either on the original Brother system or
a mult-media disk converter, such as InterMedia/Lynx Converter, or
Shaffstel

There is actually a second way: Use a disk-scanner (I build one
way back, that read floppies at a 4MHz digitizing rate) and then
a software decoder. A lot of effort, as I do not think you can
buy this. Just mentioned for completeness.

Arno

On Feb 26, 2:51*pm, Arno wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage wrote:





On Feb 25, 7:04?pm, (GMAN) wrote:
In article , wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:55:18 -0500, PS put finger
to keyboard and composed:

tg wrote:
I have a floppy disc that was formatted in a Brother WP-70 old word
processor machine. There are files on the disc that were created with
the WP-70. If I put the disc into a windows XP PC it just doesn't want
to know and asks me if I want to format the disc. I also tried the
floppy in a linux machine but that couldn't read the disc either.
1) Is there any special windows software around that will overcome
windows inability to read the disc format?
or
2) is there any kind of floppy drive around with extended abilities that
might be able to read discs formatted on other machines?
I've tried a couple of recovery programs but they can't do anything with
this floppy disc. Brother don't even list the machine on their website
it's that old so I don't expect any support from them.
thanks for any advice.

This url has some useful info on your problem;
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=50632
Unfortunately it seems you have 240KB disks which no one seems to be
able to deal with.

Some photos:
http://matux.kilu.de/Brother/

The machine appears to date from around 1984 and uses 3.5" lo-den
diskettes. Does it make sense for Brother to have formatted a 720KB
diskette with only 240KB capacity ???

- Franc Zabkar

It was a single sided 3.5" disk format .

The ST computers used a single sided drive at first at 360K then went DS/DD
720K later on and the went DS/HD 1.44 at the end.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
There were several 3.5" Brother disks that are completely non
standard. *You will not read them at all with standard disk
controllers
One had 1296 byte sectors *and another had 12 x 256 byte GCR sectors
The only way to read them is either on the original Brother system or
a mult-media disk converter, such as InterMedia/Lynx Converter, or
Shaffstel

There is actually a second way: Use a disk-scanner (I build one
way back, that read floppies at a 4MHz digitizing rate) and then
a software decoder. A lot of effort, as I do not think you can
buy this. Just mentioned for completeness.

Arno- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

As far as I can see, the clock rate was 'standard' so a normal disk
drive is OK.

Rather easier, you could contact http://www.onetouchcomputers.co.uk/page009.html
I am fairly certain they still have an InterMedia system which
supports at least two, 3.5" Brother disks

Michael