Here's the messages onscreen:

That message should be coming from the boot sector on the floppy which is a good sign.

Can't you boot normally (without the disk) then put it in and run DIR A: and see what is on it?

Also note that a 5 1/4" drive will not stop you from putting the disk in upside down.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-11-12, 23:10:

That message should be coming from the boot sector on the floppy which is a good sign.

Can't you boot normally (without the disk) then put it in and run DIR A: and see what is on it?

Also note that a 5 1/4" drive will not stop you from putting the disk in upside down.

The boot sector thing makes sense because it's all corrupted looking. I didn't know these disks had a boot sector. That's really cool.

I booted to command prompt, put the disk in label up (facing the latch) and ran dir a:.
Then this happened:

So I guess the disk is just bad?

The disk isn't bootable. You need to boot your OS from your C: drive, like normal, then use it to read the contents of the disk.

That's what I did but I can't read from the disk

I guess you could try to format it since you have nothing to lose. Is the write protect notch open or blocked on the side?

I don't understand where that non-system disk message comes from, you should normally only see that when trying to boot from a non-system disk (ie. If the disk is inserted on power-up, but not when typing dir a:). Did you really type dir a: at the command prompt? And did the PC somehow crash and reboot after typing dir a: ?

Read errors could come from the drive or from the disk, but the disc sectors are checksummed, so you should only get a generic read error message, but not corrupted data like afy and missing line breaks. If those strings are coming from the disk, then it looks as if the drive has read the disk correctly, and the corruption has occured afterwards (like a problem with disk data cable, ram corruption, timings, or maybe jumpers on the disk drive).

The notch is blocked. How do I unblock it?

nocash wrote on 2024-11-12, 23:40:

I don't understand where that non-system disk message comes from, you should normally only see that when trying to boot from a non-system disk (ie. If the disk is inserted on power-up, but not when typing dir a:). Did you really type dir a: at the command prompt? And did the PC somehow crash and reboot after typing dir a: ?

Read errors could come from the drive or from the disk, but the disc sectors are checksummed, so you should only get a generic read error message, but not corrupted data like afy and missing line breaks. If those strings are coming from the disk, then it looks as if the drive has read the disk correctly, and the corruption has occured afterwards (like a problem with disk data cable, ram corruption, timings, or maybe jumpers on the disk drive).

Sorry if I was confusing but those messages appeared when the pc tried to boot from the disk. The data error message appeared after a full bootup and running a:

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-11-12, 23:41:

The notch is blocked. How do I unblock it?

At least in your first picture it is notched and should be writable. The issue would be if you have put tape over the notch. These disk came with little electric tape-like labels to write-protect them.

I don't see any tape. Should I just return the floppy and find another test disk on ebay?

No. Try running from a dos prompt:

format a: /F:360

Asides, the flopy is really old, apparently from PC/XT era. I have never seen such a thing.
Double-density PC disks from pre-high-density era, yes.
But a sinlge-sided PC disk, no. And especially none with a C64 filesystem formatting on the other side. If your disk drive is double sided (almost certainly so if it isn't equally ancient), then it will probably see the data on side B as undecipherable garbage (it might just ignore the data on side B, or it might have a complete breakdown without afything working).

nocash wrote on 2024-11-12, 23:58:

Asides, the flopy is really old, apparently from PC/XT era. I have never seen such a thing.
Double-density PC disks from pre-high-density era, yes.
But a sinlge-sided PC disk, no. And especially none with a C64 filesystem formatting on the other side. If your disk drive is double sided (almost certainly so if it isn't equally ancient), then it will probably see the data on side B as undecipherable garbage (it might just ignore the data on side B, or it might have a complete breakdown without afything working).

I'm reading side a, the pc side.

Thinking it might take an ancient version of DOS to read it by default without messing around with drvparm

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-11-13, 00:04:

Thinking it might take an ancient version of DOS to read it by default without messing around with drvparm

Sorry whats drvparm?

FAT Byte offset 26 ( BPB_NumHeads ) specify the number of heads for the format, assuming the floppy is properly formatted for single face and the format is not damaged, It should still be readable properly in a more current version of DOS. Fat format also specify the number of sectors, sectors per cluster, sector per tracks, etc, etc

So at the end it should be able to "configure" drvparm by itself.

If it can display that error when you boot with the floppy, it mean it can also read the fat stuff as it's in the same sector.

Disks from that era where sometime self-bootable (Game work by booting it, without DOS). But it does not seam to be the case considering the non system disk error you get.

So, Please in order, do :

1 - Remove the floppy
2 - Boot on DOS and wait for the invite
3 - Insert and latch the floppy
4 - type "dir a:"

Guess it's also possible a C64 owner used the PC side for his game saves.