Backing Up DD Floppies

I was asked by my manager to download data from multiple boxes full of floppy disks he used in the early 90s. I’m used to people at work asking me for help with old UNIX systems, but reading 5.25-inch floppies is here for the first time. He used to be a musician when he lived in Israel and used his 386 PC as a sequencer with an E-mu Proteus/1 external wavetable synthesizer.

I picked my Vienna 286 computer to read the floppies. It’s quite a high spec machine with an 8MHz CPU, math coprocessor, Hercules-compatible Graphics and 1.5meg ISA RAM card… and it’s my only computer with a 5.25-inch drive. If you ask why I removed the CRT before I started copying the files, ugly mold smell goes from it every time it’s turned on and I hate it. I rather configured the machine to work in a headless mode (straight boot into Microsoft InterLink Server) and accessed the drives from a laptop over a null-modem cable.

2 thoughts on “Backing Up DD Floppies”

  1. Sabina Zelená.

    If U hate that monitor,would U sell it?
    I have no Amber-monochrome yet in my collection,even I am looking for the Green-monochrome,the Amber one may be also nice to have in the collection…but as it is probably Hercules,i will need to by the video card for it too…if I just could buy the Vienna,but I will not manipulate U to discount it by 90’000,it would not be fair to U…& I have not the fair amount…
    The set looks perfect this way(Vienna with this monitor & keyboard).

    1. Sadly, that amber CRT was not mine and I already returned it to its owner. It would be nice to have either green or amber CRT for these MDA/Hercules graphics cards. However, they are already expensive and not very often available for buying. Also, I am not sure that I have enough space at home for another CRT 🙂

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