Re: [opencbm-user] Starting All Over From Scratch

[Myke C. <su...@my...>]

On 6/14/24 15:57, Kate Lawson wrote:
> You should probably gently clean the disk heads if getting new read
> errors after it worked for a while.

Hi Kate.  Thanks for that reminder. :)  All my C= gear has basically 
been in climate-controlled storage at U-Haul since 1999.  I do recall 
having a 5.25" floppy drive head cleaning diskette which used to work 
well with a couple drops of that 91% isopropyl alcohol added to it.

Other than that, I don't recall how to clean the heads on these drives. 
They're not openly accessible even when the cases are opened.

> For backing them up, it’s faster to use nibread and then “nibconv
> FILE.nib FILE.d64”. It is more tolerant of errors than d64copy and
> you can also set the retries higher just in case the disk is a little
> dirty and subsequent passes succeed.

I've seen mention of these "nibread" and "nibconv" tools but they're not 
in my /usr/local/bin directory... so I'm guessing they're not available 
as part of OpenCBM?

There are so many little details to learn all at the same time every 
time I start to do this... it gets overwhelming. :)

More than anything right now, I would like to know if there's a way to 
list the directories of these .d64 and .d71 images I made yesterday from 
the command line without requiring me to actually use them in VICE or 
whatever.  I used to keep VICE for both 64 and 128 installed on my Linux 
box but with a PC keyboard, no C= joysticks and no virtual disks to 
load... I couldn't do much more than stare at the "READY." screens.

My 1571 stopped reading disks yesterday.  It got so far and suddenly 
stopped.  I only have one of them.  I think I need to knock its head 
back on track but I don't remember the command for doing that and I 
don't even have my Commodores setup, plugged in and turned on just yet 
to issue it even if I did know.

I tried my 1541-II but it's apparently not reading disks either.  It 
comes on and just sits there looking prettier than an original 1541.

So I tried my original 1541, too, and it just sits there and does 
nothing either.  This is the trouble I had 11 years ago when I bought my 
ZoomFloppy and tried doing this in 2013.

So I'm 3 for 3 at the moment... with none of my drives working for 
making more disk images.

And none of my four 1581s are good for this either.  I keep reading 
online for options that work with 1581 floppies because I have a lot of 
those too.  Looks like I'm going to need to find and buy an internally 
mountable 3.5" floppy drive for my Linux box because my USB 3.5" drive 
doesn't have what it needs either.

Too many things failing at the same time are exactly why I had to 
abandon this effort before.  This time, however, I'm seriously 
considering paying for some repairs or like-new refurbs.

It's getting ridiculous.

Myke