My Apple 2gs 5.25 floppy disk adventure

[+Warwagon MVC]

My parents gave me our old Apple 2gs. It doesn't have a working 3.5-inch disk drive, but I still wanted to get data off the big 5.25 floppy disks.

So, I purchased a Serial to null modem cable. You plug one end into the back of the 2gs in the modem port, and I hook the other end into a USB to serial cable. Then, I could send a boot image over a serial connection from the computer and boot a program using the 2gs using a program called "ADTpro."  From there, I could read the contents of a floppy disk and send it back to my computer in .dsk format.

That worked. But some personal 5.25 floppies with old personal data on them just would not read. They sounded terrible in the disk drive and would throw an i/o error. If I attempted to send the disk, all I would get was errors. So today, I thought I would get creative.

I took an old 5.25 floppy disk that read just fine and that I didn't care about anymore, cut the side of the disk open, and pulled the floppy part out. Then I did the same to one of the disks with personal information. I then took the floppy part upstairs, rinsed it off, scrubbed it with a towel, and put it into the enclosure of the working disk.

It copied without errors on the first try! I did that for each disk with personal information. I got all the disks copied!

While drastic, I mostly wanted to see what was on the disks. As they say, I just needed "one good read". I didn't want to save the disks.

Doing this, I had a 100% success rate.

I then put them in an Apple 2gs emulator and explored the contents of the disks.

 

[Z'Loth]

Oh my goodness.... a Apple IIGS. I haven't heard that word in 25 years.

[ultimate99]

Why you're using light theme on win11?? i know....off topic

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 22/10/2024 at 15:01, ultimate99 said:

Why you're using light theme on win11?? i know....off topic

I like the light theme

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 22/10/2024 at 15:59, Warwagon said:

I like the light theme

ba dum tish