For a couple of weeks, I've been trying to get some files off old floppy diskettes. I bought a USB floppy drive that seems to work fine, but there is a problem.
These 3 1/2" floppies were last written by Windows 95 or 98. They are all missing the media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block. Windows XP and beyond cannot access the files.
I could not figure out how to get DiskProbe to change that byte to F0—frankly, I could not seem to access the floppy drive with it at all.
I've looked around town for an old Windows 95 or 98 rig, to no avail. I could buy one through eBay, but I'd use it for a few minutes, and never need it again.
The other day, thanks to the Steam summer sale, I started playing the original Tomb Raider. It runs by way of Dosbox, which had me wondering if I could use Dosbox in some way to copy those old floppies. I played around with Dosbox and saw the files I want listed on one of those floppies—but I need to get them OFF those floppies!
Ideally, I'd like to copy them onto a physical hard drive folder I could access through Windows. Clearly, Dosbox accesses the Tomb Raider 1 files from the Steam folder. But I don't know if this version of Dosbox can copy files around—I already tried the old diskcopy command, and it was not recognized. I do have blank floppies I could format with Windows, if needed.
Maybe I need a different version of Dosbox?
If anyone out there is very familiar with Dosbox, I would very much appreciate the help.
These 3 1/2" floppies were last written by Windows 95 or 98. They are all missing the media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block. Windows XP and beyond cannot access the files.
I could not figure out how to get DiskProbe to change that byte to F0—frankly, I could not seem to access the floppy drive with it at all.
I've looked around town for an old Windows 95 or 98 rig, to no avail. I could buy one through eBay, but I'd use it for a few minutes, and never need it again.
The other day, thanks to the Steam summer sale, I started playing the original Tomb Raider. It runs by way of Dosbox, which had me wondering if I could use Dosbox in some way to copy those old floppies. I played around with Dosbox and saw the files I want listed on one of those floppies—but I need to get them OFF those floppies!
Ideally, I'd like to copy them onto a physical hard drive folder I could access through Windows. Clearly, Dosbox accesses the Tomb Raider 1 files from the Steam folder. But I don't know if this version of Dosbox can copy files around—I already tried the old diskcopy command, and it was not recognized. I do have blank floppies I could format with Windows, if needed.
Maybe I need a different version of Dosbox?
If anyone out there is very familiar with Dosbox, I would very much appreciate the help.