Uncreative Labs

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

As most know I have an old Futura 100 (aka Innovion PGS-III) photography system.

I need a non-manual way of reading the photo data on the floppies this system makes for backup purposes to a normal PC.

I want to be able to compile the (they are either 15bit or 16bit hi color targa) images into a file that I can open on a normal PC.

I can read the disk data and image it and copy it but despite reading through several so called "Assembly" programming guides I still no little more than I did after acing several C++ and basic classes. Visually I can ID the information on the disk by simply page through it in a viewer.

Basically I need a program that will ID the start and the end of the file on the disk and simply make a header for 512x483 and load the 16bit chunks color corrected into a PC compatible file either BMP 512x483 or targa (which I can also read).

Issue is how do I read a floppy low level under a windows 9x or NT platform?

Even if I had to use the herne data systems imaging program I have now to read the disk and use a separate utility to get the photo out of the disk image with the proper header?

Anyone know of a good programming site with helpfull folks? Or anyone willing to take a disk image I've made and make a utility to dump it to a windows compatible targa? It should be simple but for me impossible, I can make a blackjack program but can't make a simple disk read program, go figure they didn't figure real I/O access was important to teach. Sad

Thanx
Ryan

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I am not quite sure what you are saying
SDybex had a program " nice22" they would read off floppy formats
that may be your first problem

there is a crossover problem, some newer systems look at old disks ( dod 2.10 for examople)
and they appear blank or not formatted.

You could take any old hard disk and format it under an old dos 3,10 or 3.30 are good choices- support up to 32 megs.

if you have an old system remember the 528 limit the old 386 and early 486's have is really 1024-16-63.

but dos 3.1 can' only see the first 32 megs, and 3.30 can see multiple 32m partitions.

another way to investigate without a lot of
screw turning, is to thet the main drive be a 1.44 floppy and the drive from the system will be whatever it now uses.

I have no idea of the format or capacity of the photo system's drive.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

These disks far as I can tell are 720kb and are nearly identical to a dos floppy disk save one important detail.

NO FILE SYSTEM

I would need a utility to read off the begining header of this fatless "IDOS" disk and dump the consequtive information into a targa file (which is the format of the image more or less) That this unit saves, one photo per disk.

I know the technicals of the hardware but never got a reference manual or developement software for the unit so I can't say for certain besides what I've tested and found to be true.

It should not be difficult to make a utility that would read only the roughly 480kb image off the disk and dump into a file. I don't believe there would need to be much translation if it is left in Targa which natively supports 16 bit color.

Someone else has done this with this system but he is completely unwilling to allow me to have the utility either by sale or gift, so now I am left to my own means.

Cheers
Ryan

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Well I am on my way to figuring this out on my own as usual, I can get the photograph out of the image of the floppy by using Tiny hexer, deleting the information before and after the targa file and then adding a 32byte header from a valid windows targa file of the same size (this is what was sinking me initially, valid headers and FOOTERs), save as something.tga and voila. Now the only trouble is making a utility that does that without all sorts of steps and time wasting. I still have no idea how C++, q-basic or even machine languages actually deal with a floppy that has no fat. If I can figure that out then the rest is very simple.

The only trouble I am seeing is that bright red under windows looks deep magenta, blue is the same on both platforms but bright green is now kakki colored instead of true green, not really sure how targa sets up whether a file is RGB or MCYK.

I'm still in for some help though, but this time I can provide what and where on the disk must be imaged in hex, I will have to convert to sectors sometime if I ever get info on what means really need to be taken to address the floppy sector by sector.

I would think after all these years there must be some cookie cutter code made for this purpose I could borrow and taylor.

Damn I hate fixing things that I am deaf dumb and blind on without assistance but that seems to be the only way I can get things I need done taken care of. Persistance pays off eventually but not when you need it to like my Tandy 1000rlx memory and HD upgrade 10 years late.

Cheers
Ryan

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

Hi, about this code, i remember something quite similar was made to read the .411 files floppy mavicas make.
The .411 files actually were the thumbnails viewable only trought the camera lcd. This means that program was a cookie cutter, i remember it was open source, so i supose you can edit it to search a larger chunk of data and put on it different header and footer.

Sadly i known of this via "mav-magazine.com" site, long gone, Sad

But i got somewere a cardboard folder with a lot of material of the site printed. Very Happy

If i got this article, i can scan and post it for you.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

That sounds interesting, but I have a feeling that it won't work (Mavica disks are dos based I think) I have some other code I am working on now, I will see how it pans out, last time I tried just got constant errors.

Thank You
Ryan

Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 10

ryan wrote:

As most know I have an old Futura 100 (aka Innovion PGS-III) photography system.

I need a non-manual way of reading the photo data on the floppies this system makes for backup purposes to a normal PC.

I want to be able to compile the (they are either 15bit or 16bit hi color targa) images into a file that I can open on a normal PC.

I can read the disk data and image it and copy it but despite reading through several so called "Assembly" programming guides I still no little more than I did after acing several C++ and basic classes. Visually I can ID the information on the disk by simply page through it in a viewer.

Basically I need a program that will ID the start and the end of the file on the disk and simply make a header for 512x483 and load the 16bit chunks color corrected into a PC compatible file either BMP 512x483 or targa (which I can also read).

Issue is how do I read a floppy low level under a windows 9x or NT platform?

Even if I had to use the herne data systems imaging program I have now to read the disk and use a separate utility to get the photo out of the disk image with the proper header?

Anyone know of a good programming site with helpfull folks? Or anyone willing to take a disk image I've made and make a utility to dump it to a windows compatible targa? It should be simple but for me impossible, I can make a blackjack program but can't make a simple disk read program, go figure they didn't figure real I/O access was important to teach. Sad

Thanx
Ryan

no problem, if you still need help send me the disk image you created from it. as long as it truly is a standard targa header, and it isn't fragmented over various places on the disk then i should be able to help you out.

Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 10

let me add, that if you just send me one dis image and i can successfully find targa files somewhere in there then i'll just write a little program that i can send you to hopefully get more targas off other images without you going through the trouble of sending them to me.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Should have posted this earlier....

I got a snippet of C++ code from somewhere but cannot seem to get it to work at all under HI C (fix one problem more occur). Anyway if you are willing to help it is appreciated, you can download the Herne data systems disk image files from here, you can image a 720k disk under any Windows 9x or lower system using maxidisk.

This is the photo disk with a white image saved

http://www.fileshack.us/get_file.php?id=403392&file=white.hdk

This is the photo disk blank formatted on the system (no photo)

http://www.fileshack.us/get_file.php?id=992231&file=blank.hdk

The layout of the disk image is as follows in Tinyhexer (I assume a small header is used for Herne Maxidisk to know what format disk) Note the important fixed location of where the image data begins and ends.

0x00 Beginning of the disk image has following 0110 0250 0209 0000 (assumable herne data systems specs for writing the disk)
0x00 08 through 0x70 05 is FFFF which is followed by 0000 fill up until the vendor name area

0x01E0 08 Vendor name area (casi or qlt)
0x0200 08 ?? Code or file insertion data? 8050 0000 0000 01FF 01E3 026C

0x0240 08 File Name Area (in ascii)

0x2000 08 First lone FF of a set of 8 in midst of 0000
0x2380 08 Last Lone FF in midst of 0000 "Empty"

0x2400 08 beginning of image data
0x7b400 08 end of image data area, start of image footer

The Color White is obviously FFFF black 0000

7800 Present at the end of the image data, it is the footer for the targa file

0x07BC00 08 is the end of the targa footer
E5E5 is present on "Blank/Unused" areas of the disk to the end of the disk.

This is and image of one of the systems boot/printer disks if anyone is curious

http://www.fileshack.us/get_file.php?id=786961&file=qltv7.hdk

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Originally I had been imaging photo disks that had just basic colors so I could start and ID the color mapping, I just tried a full color photo and got an upside down suido color image, you could still sort of see that there was supposed to be a person there but they were in very bright random colors.

This is because of my lack of understanding HOW I can add a proper header and footer for the color pallet since we are dealing with 16bit images. 512x483 in the old format of TGA which I believe isn't supported now.

Now I will have to try to figure out what pallet scheme this box uses, my guess is that its fixed but I'm not sure.

Will be doing some reading to find out.

Hope to see a solution
Ryan