Very Computer

by **jpru..** » Wed, 07 May 2003 23:52:47

My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
of some unknown size and format (he passed away, and no longer has the
word processor). I have some of his disks, and want to find out if any
of the things he's written are on them. The floppies show up as
unformatted when I put them in my Windows XP box. I did a
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=./foo
on one of the disks, and foo ended up being a 1440K file mainly filled
with 0s (there was some unrecognizable data in the middle of the disk,
though only a few bytes).

Some current Swintec typewriters indicate that they use 180K floppies,
and I'd be suprised if the old word processors used any more (he
probably had it 15-20 years ago). The disks themselves are only 720K
disks.

Does anyone know if Swintec has used a standard format for the past
20 years, and if so, if there is a way to recover at least the raw data
from the floppy? At the very least, can someone explain to me (or
direct me to a place that explains to me) how/if I can tell dd to assume
that the floppy is formatted with a different size than 1440K? Any
other advice/suggestions/etc?

Thank you.

Jeff Rugen

by **Chris Varnsver** » Thu, 08 May 2003 04:23:34

> My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
> of some unknown size and format (he passed away, and no longer has the
> word processor). I have some of his disks, and want to find out if any
> of the things he's written are on them. The floppies show up as
> unformatted when I put them in my Windows XP box. I did a
> dd if=/dev/fd0 of=./foo
> on one of the disks, and foo ended up being a 1440K file mainly filled
> with 0s (there was some unrecognizable data in the middle of the disk,
> though only a few bytes).

> Some current Swintec typewriters indicate that they use 180K floppies,
> and I'd be suprised if the old word processors used any more (he
> probably had it 15-20 years ago). The disks themselves are only 720K
> disks.

> Does anyone know if Swintec has used a standard format for the past
> 20 years, and if so, if there is a way to recover at least the raw data
> from the floppy? At the very least, can someone explain to me (or
> direct me to a place that explains to me) how/if I can tell dd to assume
> that the floppy is formatted with a different size than 1440K? Any
> other advice/suggestions/etc?

> Thank you.

> Jeff Rugen

well, not my area of expertise, but if you knew the file system, you
could mount the floppy with that, and then maybe you could see some of
the files on it, otherwise a good old hex and a tablefile seems to be
the trick. haven't seen a good hex table file for stuff older than
bout 10 years in mi life tho, so the mount thing seems like the only
option i can give you.

try finding an ancient word processor usenet forum, and ask in there,
might be a plan

by **R.F. Pel** » Thu, 08 May 2003 06:23:52

> My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
> of some unknown size and format (he passed away, and no longer has the
> word processor). I have some of his disks, and want to find out if any
> of the things he's written are on them. The floppies show up as
> unformatted when I put them in my Windows XP box. I did a
> dd if=/dev/fd0 of=./foo
> on one of the disks, and foo ended up being a 1440K file mainly filled
> with 0s (there was some unrecognizable data in the middle of the disk,
> though only a few bytes).

Random question number one, if these are 5.25 inch floppies, if you manually
rotate the recording disk in its sleeve, how many holes are in the inner
side that show through the little hole in the sleeve when you rotate it 360
degrees once? My suspicion is that the floppies might be hard-sectored.

--

Ruurd

by **Kenneth A Kauffma** » Thu, 08 May 2003 07:46:48

> > My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
> > of some unknown size and format (he passed away, and no longer has the
> > word processor). I have some of his disks, and want to find out if any
> > of the things he's written are on them. The floppies show up as
> > unformatted when I put them in my Windows XP box. I did a
> > dd if=/dev/fd0 of=./foo
> > on one of the disks, and foo ended up being a 1440K file mainly filled
> > with 0s (there was some unrecognizable data in the middle of the disk,
> > though only a few bytes).

> Random question number one, if these are 5.25 inch floppies, if you
manually
> rotate the recording disk in its sleeve, how many holes are in the inner
> side that show through the little hole in the sleeve when you rotate it
360
> degrees once? My suspicion is that the floppies might be hard-sectored.

> --

> Ruurd

720 is a single density 3.5 vs 1440 HD 3.5.

ken k

by **Piotr P. Karwas** » Thu, 08 May 2003 08:57:44

Quote:> Does anyone know if Swintec has used a standard format for the past
> 20 years, and if so, if there is a way to recover at least the raw data
> from the floppy? At the very least, can someone explain to me (or
> direct me to a place that explains to me) how/if I can tell dd to assume
> that the floppy is formatted with a different size than 1440K? Any
> other advice/suggestions/etc?

I don't know which is the format of the Swintec disks, but you can try
to tell specifically to the linux fd driver which is the format of the
disk.

man fd

should help you (or search 'fd linux man' on google). If you don't
already have the device files in the /dev directory create them with

mknod /dev/fd0(suffix choosen in 'man fd') b 2 (minor #)

I hope the disk are not damaged by age: my Commodore 64 disks begin
already to lose data.

Piotr

by **Rod Smi** » Thu, 08 May 2003 12:54:01

Quote:> My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
> of some unknown size and format
...
> Does anyone know if Swintec has used a standard format for the past
> 20 years, and if so, if there is a way to recover at least the raw data
> from the floppy?

I don't know the answer, but you might find it by doing a Web search on
"Swintec word processor." When I did, the first few hits were for Swintec
dealers, so you might try contacting one of them and asking. If you know
the model number of the word processor, be sure to mention it.

--

http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

by **Bill Marcu** » Thu, 08 May 2003 12:02:15

> My grandfather had an old Swintec word processor that used floppy disks
> of some unknown size and format (he passed away, and no longer has the
> word processor). I have some of his disks, and want to find out if any
> of the things he's written are on them. The floppies show up as
> unformatted when I put them in my Windows XP box. I did a
> dd if=/dev/fd0 of=./foo
> on one of the disks, and foo ended up being a 1440K file mainly filled
> with 0s (there was some unrecognizable data in the middle of the disk,
> though only a few bytes).

> Some current Swintec typewriters indicate that they use 180K floppies,
> and I'd be suprised if the old word processors used any more (he
> probably had it 15-20 years ago). The disks themselves are only 720K
> disks.

> Does anyone know if Swintec has used a standard format for the past
> 20 years, and if so, if there is a way to recover at least the raw data
> from the floppy? At the very least, can someone explain to me (or
> direct me to a place that explains to me) how/if I can tell dd to assume
> that the floppy is formatted with a different size than 1440K? Any
> other advice/suggestions/etc?

If you "ls /dev/fd0*", you should find many device names representing
different disk formats. However, if dd produced a 1440k file with no
error messages, and you didn't use "conv=noerror", I would think that
the format probably is 1440k. Or possibly 720k using one side of the
disk, and the disks were pre-formatted for 1440k. You might try
"strings" on the 1440k file.

--
bill marcum the mushroom-eating laboratory monkey
What kind of monkey are you? http://thesurrealist.co.uk/monkey.cgi

Very Computer

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats

Non-standard floppy formats