Setup of compatible 5.25" FDD in older PC running Linux

[brian8599]

I'm interested in a 5.25" 360K drive installed in my older AMD 2000XP / Asus A7NX-X system running Linux (Debian) to aid in archiving software for my new-to-me PCjr. A MAJOR plus would be if the 5.25 could also read double-sided Apple IIe/c floppies as well for the same purpose (but I'm pretty sure this is an impossibility on the PC side). I'd think the PCjr floppy solution has been done 1000x already. I will also install a 2nd 5.25" floppy drive if I can figure out Apple IIe/c compatibility as well for the same purpose.

The target AMD system has plenty of ISA slots available and was built around 2000. I was thinking this was a matter of obtaining an older but very popular ISA floppy controller, the most reliable/compatible 5.25 FDD and basically be good to go given the fantastic hardware and file system support of most Linux distributions. I do have a need for SCSI-1 controller (I collect Macs and IIe/IIc systems as well) so I have an Adaptec 1540 narrow SCSI controller. I did locate an Adaptec 1542C that included a floppy controller.

What is a proven workable solution for this?

Thank you!
-Brian

[jmetal88]

I haven't tried very hard to get floppies working on Linux (it seems to be somewhat difficult these days, although the last I tried was with a USB floppy, so maybe an ISA bus floppy would be better supported), but when you mentioned backing up Apple II floppies, I thought of this:

http://www.kryoflux.com/

I've wanted one for a while, but I just can't seem to get the cash together.

[Brutman]

I can't comment on the Apple II requirement. But running a 5.25 inch floppy under Linux on a machine that old is generally not a problem.

You can image and create standard diskettes with this setup. Copy protected diskettes will have read errors, as they should for the copy protection, so those can not be imaged. The 'dd' command can create and write images in the same format as my dskimage program. (The images are raw hex dumps of all of the sectors on the disk.)

There is a small catch with ancient diskettes - the vfat driver can get confused because it assumes a reasonable diskette descriptor block. DD works fine, but trying to mount the images with the loopback driver fails.

[brian8599]

I haven't tried very hard to get floppies working on Linux (it seems to be somewhat difficult these days, although the last I tried was with a USB floppy, so maybe an ISA bus floppy would be better supported), but when you mentioned backing up Apple II floppies, I thought of this:

http://www.kryoflux.com/

I've wanted one for a while, but I just can't seem to get the cash together.

That fits the bill nicely. I'd have to research drive models that work best with it but I think I'm going to try that route. Now, if I can rustle up $89 Euro..

[brian8599]

I can't comment on the Apple II requirement. But running a 5.25 inch floppy under Linux on a machine that old is generally not a problem.

You can image and create standard diskettes with this setup. Copy protected diskettes will have read errors, as they should for the copy protection, so those can not be imaged. The 'dd' command can create and write images in the same format as my dskimage program. (The images are raw hex dumps of all of the sectors on the disk.)

There is a small catch with ancient diskettes - the vfat driver can get confused because it assumes a reasonable diskette descriptor block. DD works fine, but trying to mount the images with the loopback driver fails.

Thanks a lot for sharing your expertise. I would have smacked my head over the loopback issue for sure. The route I'm doing now for Apple is to remove the internal SCSI HDD from a Macintosh system with an Apple IIe emulation card and 5.25" floppy then mount/copy the contents. It works ok but it's cumbersome and a PITA. The Kryoflux USB solution is very attractive. I will most certainly post my results when I have used it. I have a few other systems I'd like to acquire as well beyond Apple and the PCjr.

[Brutman]

Remember, the loopback issue only happens on the oldest diskettes - those from the DOS 1.x timeframe or commercial vendors who thought they were cute and did not use the media descriptor correctly. They are still valid DOS diskettes but the Linux VFAT driver assumes the media descriptor is perfect, and any variation confuses it. (I reviewed the source code but decided it was not worth trying to fix for the one or two diskettes that caused a problem.)

Moving a hard drive around is a pain, but maybe you can protect the drive a little better by keeping it in an external enclosure and using the external ports of your SCSI adapters. (Does the Mac allow for a second HD externally?)

For IDE drives this is much easier - a $15 USB to IDE adapter works great for external drives that you rarely connect.