Retrieving Commodore 64 data

nodle

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 9, 2001
Messages
1,558
Ok just recently I ran across my old 5 1/4 floppy disks. I wrote a bunch of games on these for the Commodore 64 back in the day. I tried hooking up a 5 1/4 drive to a XP machine, but everything I go to read the data it asks me to format them. I also have access to multiple 5 1/4 drives and machines with the drives still in them but none will read the data. I take it this is probably since they are in a special format. Is there anything that I can do to read the data off of these disks? Or something special that I have to do? Has anyone had success with this. Thanks for any input.
 
Found this in a Google search. You should try it sometime :D

http://www.root.org/~nate/c64/x1541.html

Yes, the format cannot be read by a regular PC 5.25" drive.

Looks like you will need an original 1541 drive to read the disks, and either make an adapter yourself, or buy one from Hungary with CASH (no no, really, this is not a scam) :D

Then you can use this baby to capture and extract the files into something useful.

http://markus.brenner.de/mnib/

No, really, I've never owned a C64, but it only took me 2 minutes to find this information. You must not have looked very hard.
 
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So basically you have to use their 5.25" drive, you just can't use a regular drive and use some sort of software to read the data I take it.
 
So basically you have to use their 5.25" drive, you just can't use a regular drive and use some sort of software to read the data I take it.

You have to use the original drive. On the PC drive, the data density, tracks and sector layout, and encoding are probably different. Some aspects of the floppy format are non-configurable.
 
Ya not looking good been reading online, there are some places that will do it for you for a price. Oh well someday I will have to pick up a Commodore 64 and drive off of ebay I guess.
 
You can pick up an old commodore drive cheap on e-bay, also there are ways of hooking it up to your PC. There are still many commodore enthusiasts out there, just keep googling.
 
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