Is there a program equivant to GNU `ddrescue` for GEM or TOS?

[beqelessen]

Hi -

 

I've recently purchased and had refurbished an Atari ST 520 STFM. (Some caps in the power supply replaced; TOS ROMs upgraded from 1.02 to 1.04. Memory still at 512KB.). The floppy disk drive was unrecoverable, but Diego Parrilla's SidecarTridge has been a life saver; I mostly run it in its hard disk emulator mode. The ST and SidecarTridge combo is rock solid. My interest isn't games, but contemporary productivity, utility and comms software.

 

I've replaced the failed floppy drive with a functional one. I received 40-odd floppy disks with the Atari ST. They look in good condition, with no evidence of mould.

 

I've had some success imaging (so far) one in ten of the floppies using a known-good external USB floppy drive plugged into one of my Linux laptops, and using GNU `ddrescue` to scrape the data off the disks, but I suspect I'm being kiboshed by the multiple track and sector layouts as described at http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/doc/disk-atarist.html.

 

So, to my question: is there TOS or GEM software for the Atari ST that'll do a low level scrape of the data on a floppy disk and write it to an image on hard disk?

 

My web searches have turned up various options that utilise custom drivers and Windows software, such as https://github.com/ChrisBertrandDotNet/ST-Recover and https://atari.8bitchip.info/floimgd.php, but if at all possible I'd like to do the work on the Atari ST itself.

 

For context; a suspiciously ineffective `ddrescue` session:

 

GNU ddrescue 1.23
About to copy 1474 kBytes
from '/dev/sda' [UNKNOWN] (1474560)
  to 'Atari ST Cannon Fodder d01.st'
Proceed (y/N)? y
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
     ipos:    21504 B, non-trimmed:        0 B,  current rate:       0 B/s
     opos:    21504 B, non-scraped:    1452 kB,  average rate:       0 B/s
non-tried:        0 B,  bad-sector:    22016 B,    error rate:       0 B/s
  rescued:        0 B,   bad areas:        2,        run time:      6m 24s
pct rescued:    0.00%, read errors:       66,  remaining time:         n/a
                              time since last successful read:         n/a
Scraping failed blocks... (forwards)^C        
  Interrupted by user

 

Thanks!

beq

[Zogging Hell]

Depends on what the disk' copy protection routines are for a choice of suitable program. Pasti, I believe, is the only one that will do commercial game disks on the ST itself (I may be wrong and there may be others now). But I think it can only image the disk and not write it back. If the disks aren't games and don't have physical protection like fuzzy bits and whatnot, then Magic Shadow Archiver (there are two versions, a later one has more features) or Fastcopy Pro can image the disks. Again there may be others but I'm slightly out the loop on this one. Of those two the Magic Shadow Archiver's 'MSA' format is probably better supported in emulators.

[beqelessen]

Superb, thank you @Zogging Hell. I didn't realise Pasti was an ST executable.

 

I ought to have said these are hand-labelled disks, so any copy protection may already have been defeated decades ago. I'll pull down Magic Shadow Archiver and Fastcopy Pro.

 

Having the names of those utilities helps to get me started; web search engines have degraded to such a degree that it's become impossible to find anything in the long tail with an insufficiently focused keyword. For example, knowing the name "Fastcopy Pro" allows me to find https://temlib.org/AtariForumWiki/index.php/Disk_Imaging

 

I missed the 16-bit home computer era due to changed financial circumstances as I was reaching adulthood. (My eight-bit foundation was enough for a start in the software industry via the back door in the mid 1990s.) It's wonderful to rediscover today what I missed back then. Thank you for your kindhearted support!

[Zogging Hell]

Glad to have helped, I would stick to MSA then if the disks aren't protected. It is fairly easy to convert to the widely used 'ST' format as well, which is a bonus. As I said there are two versions of MSA, one just does the meat and potatoes with a limited user interface (which is the one you linked I think). The other is more like ST Zip with a better shell called JayMSA, although if I recall it might have been a tiny bit more flakey in use (which may have been down to my setup rather than the program). That can be found here..

https://phoenix.inf.upol.cz/~opichal/jay/stapps.htm#msa

[beqelessen]

5 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

Glad to have helped, I would stick to MSA then if the disks aren't protected. It is fairly easy to convert to the widely used 'ST' format as well, which is a bonus. As I said there are two versions of MSA, one just does the meat and potatoes with a limited user interface (which is the one you linked I think). The other is more like ST Zip with a better shell called JayMSA, although if I recall it might have been a tiny bit more flakey in use (which may have been down to my setup rather than the program). That can be found here..

https://phoenix.inf.upol.cz/~opichal/jay/stapps.htm#msa

Ooh, that one's a bit baffling! I'm finding PASTI.PRG, with its ability to write the image to the virtual HD on the SidecarTridge to be a better option - but I've yet to get a clean image.

 

(Oh, and if anyone has a clue what the verbose info in Pasti means, I'm all ears.)

 

It's super-weird; the very first floppy I tried to image, using `ddrescue` on a Linux machine, imaged successfully (with just a couple of bad blocks) and I could boot it in Hatari. It was a demo, which played through successfully despite the bad blocks. I've attached it here for those interested.

 

Every floppy I've attempted to image since then has been a duffer. That seems too unlikely to be a coincidence. I'm wondering if I might have trashed the rest. I don't see evidence of damage on the physical disks, though.

 

It's all an adventure!

 

Atari ST disk 1 Race Drivin.st ddrescue.txt

Edited November 4 by beqelessen
Sorting out the bizarre attachment inline rendering system.

[Zogging Hell]

Looks like disk 1 of a commercial game, so would probably require PASTI due to the physical protection (the bad blocks you are getting perhaps?). I imagine there are already images of this out there as well as hacked versions.

What might have happened with the rest of your disks is that unbeknown to you some crud has migrated from the disk onto your drive head and now it can't read anything. Can it read any known good disks? I would give the drive head a clean so it doesn't damage any of the other disks and then give all the disks a clean with a q-tip and some distilled water. It can sometimes be surprising what is on the disks, I've often encountered disks with a thin film of dirt/ mould all over, which isn't as obvious as a small patch of dirt to see.