non working disks - Monkey Island

[kodak80]

Argghh. After waiting over a month, I have just taken receipt of a game purchased from the UK only to find that the disks are probably not working as disk 1 reports in Steem that it is corrupted after running the PRG. I should say that I have not yet tried these disks in a real Atari but these SCP images don't look promising. The game is The Secret Of Monkey Island.

MonkeyIsland.jpg

The SCP capture of the disks (5 rev) can be found here:
https://mega.co.nz/#!8YE1mCiD!__1wVnK2E ... Dgr1_hCJ_8

I would appreciate some input on if these disks are bad or if this is my floppy disk drive at fault? I cleaned the drive recently but ya never know the disk drive could have failed. Disk 4 in AUFIT looks like it contains no data at all so I don't think cleaning the floppy disk itself will help.

I have included screenshots from AUFIT of the disks.

If anyone has a working copy, I would appreciate an SCP or Kryoflux capture to create some working disks from.

Disk1(1).png

Disk1(2).png

Disk2.png

Disk3.png

Disk4.png

[JimDrew]

Clean the drive! I have to clean the drive after about every disk I image.

[kodak80]

Clean the drive! I have to clean the drive after about every disk I image.

OK, I am away from home until the weekend now so will try on my return. I may also try another drive if this doesn't work. I would have thought that even with dirty heads that I would have seen some data on disk 4 though. The whole disk shows as no data?

[JimDrew]

I have seen disk drives where a piece of debris lifts the head enough to have a flat line of data, and it scratches the surface severely! Rule of thumb is that if you hear anything but smooth rotations, do not continue! Clean the disk and the drive heads.

[dlfrsilver]

Kodak, your disks surely have mould on them. You need to clean those with a coton eye cleaner + alcohol. You will then have a chance to make correct images.

[kodak80]

OK, I used my other SCP board and floppy and have working disks now for the first 3 disks. Disk 4 however has the metal centre seperated from the magnetic media and hence why the SCP has no data showing. Anyone have disk 4 and willing to share an SCP capture or Kryoflux capture so I can create a working disk?

[dlfrsilver]

there is a solution : use a very thin dose of cyanolite or super glue III in order to attach the disk to the central iron circle.

And retry imaging

[kodak80]

I tried that once and it did not work. I had a Lemmings floppy disk that was in the same state and glued the metal back onto the magnetic surface. Whilst the media now rotated, the index pulse and data were not aligned correctly and the disk never worked. Not going to try it again unless someone has been sucessful in doing this?

[JimDrew]

Yeah, there is really no way to align the metal to the index'd data on the disk unless you could rotate the metal and have enough tension to still rotate the disk. If so, you could use SCP's analyzer to read track 0 and look for the gap... keep rotating it until the gap was in the correct location (referenced to the index) and then super-glued the metal permanently.

[kodak80]

I have taken another approach as there are STX versions on Atarimania and there is no apparent disk protection on disks 2 and 3. I have created two copies of disk 4:

1. I have converted the disk 4 STX to SCP version using HxC Floppy Emulator.
2. I have also loaded the original disk 3 SCP I created into HxC Floppy Emulator and deleted the files and replaced them with the file on the STX version of disk 4.

I have yet to get the game to ask me for disk 4, so I have not tested these yet.

[DrCoolZic]

If disk is not protected position of the index should not matter?
Many protected disk dont use data position as part of the protection.

I need to think about adding a capability in Aufit to allow shifting index relative to data. Should not be too hard.

[kodak80]

Surely, it is almost impossible to get the metal in the correct position so that the tracks are aligned correctly?

The metal hub would need to be centred so that the tracks are aligned correctly. It would need to be milimeter perfect?

[DrCoolZic]

I misinterpreted the problem. I thought it was just a problem of index pulse not in the correct position

[Jeff_HxC2001]

I tried that once and it did not work. I had a Lemmings floppy disk that was in the same state and glued the metal back onto the magnetic surface. Whilst the media now rotated, the index pulse and data were not aligned correctly and the disk never worked. Not going to try it again unless someone has been sucessful in doing this?

The HxC software allow you to rotate the disk vs the index signal:

Image2.png

This is done to solve such situation .

http://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... t_beta.zip

[kodak80]

Out of curiosity, I dug out the Lemmings disk I had attempted to repair and glued the metal hub back. I don't think shifting the tracks will help me.... Here is the disk image and it does look pretty bad. Even though the hub looks centred, it obviously is not

Screenshot 2015-05-12 08.11.19.png

[JimDrew]

That's a great feature, Jeff! I can rotate bits (up to 16 at a time), but I never thought about rotating the revolution(s). I will have to add that.

[Jeff_HxC2001]

Out of curiosity, I dug out the Lemmings disk I had attempted to repair and glued the metal hub back. I don't think shifting the tracks will help me.... Here is the disk image and it does look pretty bad. Even though the hub looks centred, it obviously is not

Screenshot 2015-05-12 08.11.19.png

Yes sure, it seems that there is a track/head alignement issue there.

[DrCoolZic]

Yes nice feature Jeff

But here the problem is different "the metal centre seperated from the magnetic media"
In that case the probability to glue the disk perfectly centered is almost null

[JimDrew]

I have fixed this issue once before using my editor/analyzer. I put a drop of CA (super glue) from a needle. This causes enough drag for the drive to spin the disk, but you can still rotate the disk on the metal center manually to reposition it. I read track 0 and looked for the gap and write splice, rotating the plastic part of the disk in reference to the metal center a little at a time until it was within a few bitcells. Then I applied a drop of CA and tilted the disk in a circle so that the glue ran around then entire circumference of the metal center.

[kodak80]

I tried that once and it did not work. I had a Lemmings floppy disk that was in the same state and glued the metal back onto the magnetic surface. Whilst the media now rotated, the index pulse and data were not aligned correctly and the disk never worked. Not going to try it again unless someone has been sucessful in doing this?

The HxC software allow you to rotate the disk vs the index signal:

Image2.png

This is done to solve such situation .

http://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_driv ... t_beta.zip

I am wondering if you can save the SCP dump once the tracks have been shifted without exporting to a new SCP file? Can the original SCP dump be updated?