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-----Original Message----- From: list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Neil Williams Sent: 27 January 2007 10:02 To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [LUG] OT: Anyone got an Amstrad PCW ? On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 08:59:11 +0000 Tom Potts <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Saturday 27 January 2007 01:34, Tom Brough wrote: > > Ok this is very OT but ........ > > > > Has anyone got a working Amstrad PCW with 720K drive ? > Would that be 5 1/4 inch ? If so you might be able to read it on a Not usually - Amstrad used their own diskette size (3.0 inch) - thicker and smaller than 5 1/4. You'd need to have an external "standard" floppy drive for the Amstrad to have used any normal diskette. It was the larger Amstrads that had standard 3.5 inch floppy drives. > you like. There are emulators for just about every machine that ever > walked the earth though you may have to run the emulator under dosemu. With a non-standard disk size and capacity, only a genuine Amstrad floppy drive will do. BTW: Tom (B): Are you sure that the data is still intact after all this time? Are you looking to migrate this data to more current hardware? (because the Amstrad PCW 8_mumble_ machines have no support for "standard" devices - you could access the data but not be able to transfer it (other than the laborious method of displaying it on the Amstrad screen and typing it into a text editor of a "normal" computer. About the only way I could ever transfer data from a PCW to anything else was to print it from the Amstrad and type it in by hand!) IIRC the Amstrad PCW 9_mumble series had some kind of peripheral support that could conceivably give you some form of connection to a standard computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW This may be the best solution: http://www.pcwking1.netfirms.com/disc-conversions.html Yes, he charges a small fee but then if someone here did have a PCW you may have had to pay out the same amount just in fuel. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ The amstrad 720k machines ran cpm using 3.5 inch disks. My boss at the time had 2. and I was able to take them home and use them on a spectrum +3 using an external 720k drive using locomotives cpm. There was no problem reading them using cpm emulators on a pc that had raw access to the disk on a pc drive as long as it was a 720k drive and not 1.44. I have an old 720 external drive but not sure if it still works. It's been in a box for years. I HAVE used it on an old 386 to access data fron a cpm disk that was written on a pcw amstrad machine but that was a locscipt file. Again years ago. So yes, it is possible. Ray -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html