Well, I've got a Kryoflux now, connected to the cheapest standard PC floppy drive that I could find on eBay, and it's working really well. The supplied software has a GUI (if you're willing to install Java, anyway; pleasingly it is OS X v10.8 compatible) and one of the output options is a raw MFM sector image, which ends up being a .MGT in Sam emulator terms. So the process is just insert disk, click 'start', adjust a file extension and repeat. It takes a bit more than one and a half minutes to do a good disk, obviously more if it ends up retrying sectors.
My disks have been in my mother's (standalone, sheltered but uninsulated) garage for the last six years but were in a house for the 10–15 years before that and I'm probably getting an 80% read success rate. Total cost for interface and drive was about £100 but I've recovered lots of work by myself as a child so it was easily worth it; this is the first time I've had any means of imaging disks at all so I've not had an opportunity to rescue anything before. Definitely recommended for anybody else in a similar situation. On 24 July 2012 23:20, Thomas Harte <tomh.retros...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've ordered one so I'll report on my findings when I have some. > > Sadly I'll just be preserving some of my own early creative work — I > was about 11 at the time so it's nothing that would be of interest to > anybody else. I'm not going to have anything of interest that's legal > to distribute that isn't already freely available. > > On 24 July 2012 09:57, Leszek Chmielewski <retr...@gmail.com> wrote: >> No, but, read here: >> http://www.softpres.org/news:2010-02-18 >> Looks like it supports SAM Coupé. >> I only do not know if it saves in MGT format. >> >> Am 23.07.2012 18:04, schrieb Thomas Harte: >> >> Being back in the UK for maybe three weeks and having uncovered some old >> floppies, and having no access to a PC with a floppy drive controller, did >> anyone try the Kyroflux route? >> >> On Thursday, 28 July 2011, Leszek Chmielewski wrote: >>> >>> >>>> >>>> > You're welcome, glad to hear you got your data back. Most of my Sam >>>> > disks >>>> > are unreadable; whether my original Sam was close to the edge of spec >>>> > or >>>> > whether the disks have just degraded over time I'm unsure. >>>> > >>>> > And congrats on the new arrival! Sell the Sam and invest in some >>>> > heavy-duty >>>> > earplugs :) >>>> > >>>> > Geoff >>>> > >>> >>> It depends much on the disc drive. I had here some SAM discs which were >>> unreadable on PC or SAM, but a very good Drive I have for my +D was still >>> able to copy it to new formated disc, and I was able to copy almost all >>> files on my PC. The fail rate is very low. If the files are valuable for >>> you, I can try to recover them. >>> >>> Leszek >> >>
