Hi, I think VGAcopy 6.25 must be run from real DOS.
Windows XP's DOS emulation is too limiting.

DOS on an USB pen drive might work.
That might change floppy drive order, though.

Using Rufus, the DOS on the USB pen drive can be made a HDD "installation" instead of a floppy, so that it appears on C:.
Rufus has a compatibility setting, I think (0x80 for HDD).

PS: Another classic is Teledisk (v2.1x), I think. It creates *.td0 files, however.

TomVDJ wrote on 2025-05-21, 07:10:

I have an old set of 5.25 inch floppy disks of the game Darkseed. I also have an old WindowsXP PC with a working 5.25 floppy drive and WinImage installed. I tried to make IMA files of the floppies to use in DosBox, but the first disk gave errors while reading it in WinImage.

Most copy protection schemes are not so easy that you can just bypass them with a sector dump. Like for example all Sierra AGI games have header/sector data that is simply invalid (overlapping sectors) and impossible to write or even read properly with standard floppy controller chips. That can only be dumped perfectly in flux mode. So Greaseweazle or Kryoflux can make a copy, and re-create such a disk, but that's it.

I'm not going to buy special hardware for this one time thing. But in the meanwhile I managed to get IMA images that seems to be working (I could install Darkseed from them without a problem). The only "portected" disk was the first one. So what I did was:

1. Booted my Windows XP machine (with the 5.25 disk drive) InAnotfrom a Windows 95 boot disk (my Windows XP machine has no boot from USB possibility).
2. This way, VGACopy was working perfectly. When reading the first disk, it indicated one "bad" sector, but was able to read the rest perfectly.
3. Also used ImageDisk to make an image of that first disk.
4. When I converted the IMD file from ImageDisk and compared it in HxD with the VGACopy files (wich is basically an IMG file with another extension, it seems), both image files were identical, except the place where the "bad sector" was. The IMD file showed this part as empty, VGACopy has some "data" there (I guess it's just garbage?).
5. I extracted all files from both the IMD and VGACopy images and compared all the files. All files were identical, so this means that the images were fine content wise. Also double checked with a set of install files I found online (but these were not in disk image format, just te files). Comparing with these "external source" also turned out identical. So all fine on file level.

So for me, this was all I wanted to achieve. Thanks all for the feedback!

Deunan wrote on 2025-05-22, 13:41:

TomVDJ wrote on 2025-05-21, 07:10:

I have an old set of 5.25 inch floppy disks of the game Darkseed. I also have an old WindowsXP PC with a working 5.25 floppy drive and WinImage installed. I tried to make IMA files of the floppies to use in DosBox, but the first disk gave errors while reading it in WinImage.

Most copy protection schemes are not so easy that you can just bypass them with a sector dump. Like for example all Sierra AGI games have header/sector data that is simply invalid (overlapping sectors) and impossible to write or even read properly with standard floppy controller chips. That can only be dumped perfectly in flux mode. So Greaseweazle or Kryoflux can make a copy, and re-create such a disk, but that's it.

In the past, for Sierra AGI games it wasn't even needed, though, since there was Sierra Unprotect utility (SUP).
It checked the original game disk for being original, then applied a patch.

b) Kyroflux doesn't read the magnetic flux, that's false propaganda in my eyes*.
To really read magnetic flux, the read head must be tapped directly with an oscilloscope or analogue-digital converter.

The floppy drive electronics that Kryolfux connects to has amp stages and digital logic that alters the information from the read head.
It's not an accurate representation of the magnetic flux, thus.

(Edit: I don’t mean you, it's just a statement that often occurs in Koryfulx community, I think.)

Jo22 wrote on 2025-05-22, 17:04:

The floppy drive electronics that Kryolfux connects to has amp stages and digital logic that alters the information from the read head.
It's not an accurate representation of the magnetic flux, thus.

True, but we only care about the well-defined flux changes which are then decoded. So amplitude is rather irrelevant as long as the head amp can pick it up. In fact any intermediate states that the scope could see, as well as the slope shapes, are of little interest outside research or personal curiosity. Same thing applies to all logic signals, which we consider digital but are analog in nature.
Data read is returned as-is, there is no digital processing to speak of other than shaping the signal to have valid logic levels. Writing is more involved, with head current reduction and precompensation, and track width trimming.

There are also other potential issues even with flux dumping method, like floppy drive stepping. Not all drives are 48/96 TPI, and floppies that are written with such unique drives must also be read on those. So a typical PC drive can dump a lot of floppy formats but not all of them.