On 02/01/2018 01:44 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: > On 02/01/2018 02:08 PM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote: >> The drives that where used on the AS/400 are all "industry standard" >> drives so it should be easy to adapt one to a PC. > > The drives may be standard, but I am curious how standard the format of > what's on the disk is. How likely is it that a PC OS from the last ~30 > years will understand how to read what's on the disk? > > Or, I'm guessing it's likely that archival programs don't need to > understand how to read the disk format for raw disk imaging.
It's pretty likely that the disks follow one of the standard IBM formats described here: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/ibm/floppy/GA21-9182-5_Diskette_General_Information_Manual_Jul80.pdf Pretty much standard FM/MFM; easy enough if you still have a PC with a legacy floppy interface. After that, it's matter of interpreting what you get. Not a big deal, really. --Chuck
