Sherlock Consulting Limited

 

 

OmniFlop Floppy Disk Driver & Wizard

 

User Guide

 

 

 

 

 

Document Type

User Guide - Uncontrolled

Document Version

2.01p

Document Reference

User Guide.doc

Date

09 May 2008

Author

Jason Watton

Status

Release

Total Number of Pages

47

 

 

 

2008 Sherlock Consulting Limited

 

 

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise) or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without the express written permission of Sherlock Consulting Limited.

Contents

1.     Introduction                                                                                                                                      4

1.1      Product Overview                                                                                                                        4

1.2      Purpose                                                                                                                                     4

1.3      Scope                                                                                                                                        4

1.4      Readership                                                                                                                                 4

1.5      References                                                                                                                                 4

1.6      Acknowledgements                                                                                                                     4

1.7      Glossary                                                                                                                                     4

1.8      History                                                                                                                                       5

1.9      Disclaimer of Warranty                                                                                                                9

2.     Installation                                                                                                                                      11

2.1      System Requirements                                                                                                                11

2.1.1       External (USB) Floppy Drives                                                                                               11

2.1.2       Disk Drive Calibration & Compatibility                                                                                   11

2.2      Components                                                                                                                             12

2.3      Installation                                                                                                                               12

2.3.1       Driver                                                                                                                               12

2.3.1.1     Windows 2000                                                                                                              12

2.3.1.2     Windows XP                                                                                                                 19

2.3.2       Application                                                                                                                        27

2.4      Removal                                                                                                                                   27

2.4.1       Driver                                                                                                                               27

2.4.1.1     Windows 2000                                                                                                              27

2.4.1.2     Windows XP                                                                                                                 27

2.4.2       Application                                                                                                                        27

2.5      Registration and Licensing                                                                                                          27

2.5.1       Justification                                                                                                                       27

2.5.2       Licensing Strategy                                                                                                             28

2.5.3       Getting a License                                                                                                               28

3.     User Guide                                                                                                                                      29

3.1      Supported Formats & Discoverers                                                                                               29

3.2      Formatting Disks                                                                                                                       34

3.3      Running OmniFlop                                                                                                                     34

3.4      Welcome Page                                                                                                                          34

3.5      Function Selection                                                                                                                     35

4.     Support                                                                                                                                          36

4.1      Things to Check                                                                                                                        36

4.1.1       Hardware                                                                                                                         36

4.1.2       Single Density Support                                                                                                       36

4.1.3       Software                                                                                                                          36

4.2      The Ideal Test Environment                                                                                                       37

4.3      The driver "does not contain any information about your hardware"                                               37

4.4      The media in the drive cannot be read                                                                                        37

4.5      It won't work with my [external USB] floppy disk drive                                                                  38

4.6      How do I install a 5¼" [internal] floppy disk drive?                                                                       38

4.7      How do I install a 3½" [internal] floppy disk drive?                                                                       38

4.8      How do use a 3" [single-sided] floppy disk drive?                                                                         38

4.9      Nothing was found                                                                                                                    38

4.10    The formatting works and it works in my old equipment but OmniFlop cannot read it                       39

5.     Using OmniFlop With Your Software                                                                                                  40

5.1      List The Formats You Need To Use                                                                                             40

5.2      Contact The Author                                                                                                                   40

5.3      Install The New Driver                                                                                                               40

5.4      Enable The Formats                                                                                                                  41

5.5      Access The Floppy Disk                                                                                                              42

5.5.1       Disk Order                                                                                                                        42

5.6      Close all Access to the Floppy Disk                                                                                              43

5.7      Disable The Formats                                                                                                                 43

5.8      Formatting a Disk                                                                                                                      43

5.9      Locking The Media Type                                                                                                            43

5.10    Unlocking The Media Type                                                                                                         44

5.11    Disabling/Enabling Read/Write Access                                                                                         45

5.12    Opening For Formatting                                                                                                             45

5.13    Closing The Format                                                                                                                   46

5.14    Formatting Tracks                                                                                                                     47

 

1.          Introduction

1.1          Product Overview

OmniFlop is a utility suite for accessing non-standard floppy disk formats in a standard PC. This is useful for archiving and resurrecting ancient data formats and floppy disks.

1.2          Purpose

This document is the User Guide for the OmniFlop utility suite.

1.3          Scope

This guide covers installation of the OmniFlop floppy disk driver and use of the OmniFlop Wizard application.

1.4          Readership

This document is targeted at any person involved in using the OmniFlop utility.

1.5          References

Ref

Title

Author

 

 

 

1.6          Acknowledgements

This document is a first edition.

 

The product and this document owe credit to:

 

Jason Watton for authorship.

Chris Richardson (http://www.8bs.com) for testing, encouragement, and support.

Jonathan Graham Harston for extensive and unique information about alien disk formats.

The Stairway To Hell website (http://www.stairwaytohell.com).

alchresearch on The Stairway To Hell forum, and at http://www.alchemistresearch.com

Robert Schmidt and "The BBC Lives!" (http://bbc.nvg.org).

The BBC Micro community via the BBC Micro Mailing List.

Peter Edwards for offering me a beer (or was it Sam?).

Paulo Gomes for telling me about compatibility with Shima Seiki sewing machines.

Tim Felgate, Darren Atkinson, and Markus Dimdal for reporting the vital format statistics.

Garth Hjelte for incredible patience dealing with DD Ensoniq disks.

Others who have tried, tested, and used previous versions of OmniDisk and OmniFlop.

Those rightly disgruntled by being missed off this list ‑ tell me (I'm sorry).

 

All of the above have the right to be identified where appropriate as authors of their respective works.

1.7          Glossary

Definitions in the text are shown italicized and bold. Use of terms recently defined elsewhere or a direct quote from elsewhere in the text are shown italicized. Bold and underlining are used for emphasis.

 

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