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How do I create an image of a flippy disk?

Applies to: RIDE 1.7.3 and later

Flippy disks are two-sided floppies intended for single-sided drives – to work with the other side (reading/writing/formatting), one simply has to turn the disk over and plug it in "upside down" – hence the term "flippy." The following is an illustration of such a disk, and note two index holes on either side. Two index holes is the ideal state, however, there are flippy disks which have just one index hole, and which, of course, cause the most problems.

Problems reading flippy disks on double-sided 5.25" drives:

  1. Head 1 (upper head in double-sided drives) captures the signal in reverse.
  2. Head 1 is by-design physically offset by eight tracks. So, if seeked "home" to Cylinder 0, then Head 0 (lower head in any drive) will capture the correct Track 0 – however, Head 1 will capture the incorrect Track 8 (in reverse).
  3. Flipping the disk in double-sided drive is possible only if it has two index holes, as in the illustration above. If a flippy disk with just a single index hole is flipped, a double-sided drive refuses to work with it for that single index hole is now at the wrong side.

If you want to modify your double-sided drive to read flippy disks directly:

To be honest (and being quite clumsy), I have never in the slightest intended to modify any drive – so from my point of view, please take references to the tutorials only as a theoretical possibility.

If you now have a double-sided drive modified to read flippy disks directly:

Once you have modified the drive, simply tick the Flippy disk check-box (ALT+I) when accessing the drive, e.g. as below in the Access options dialog for the KryoFlux controller. By ticking the ckeck-box, the signal obtained from Head 1 will be reversed before decoding.

If you have a regular double-sided drive and a flippy disk with two index holes:

What I do is that I split the creation of a flippy disk into two separate dumpings, and then merge both parts into final image, as in the following.

  1. Plug the disk into a drive so that "Side A" faces Head 0.
  2. Access the drive using one of low-level devices, e.g. KryoFlux (see how). It is okay if the disk is not recognized.
  3. Create magnetic flux streams for each track on Head 0 (see how). Make sure Heads (Alt+H) is set to 1 in the Dump to destination dialog – only Head 0 is wanted. For simplicity, stick to the default naming pattern of track<cyl>.<head>.raw, e.g. track00.0.raw (mind both dots).
  4. When done, close access to the drive via Disk → Close.
  5. Flip the disk over in the drive so that now "Side B" faces Head 0.
  6. Access the drive the same way as above.
  7. Again, create magnetic flux streams for each track on Head 0 but save them this time into a different folder. For simplicity, create a subfolder SideB in the folder where you have already dumped "Side A" tracks; stick to the default naming pattern.
  8. When done, merge the two folders. Assuming you are switched to the folder with "Side A" that contains a subfolder SideB, type in the following command:

    copy SideB\track??.0.raw track??.1.raw

  9. You have now a complete magnetic flux image of both sides that you can further work with, e.g. convert it to a more suitable image for emulation (see how).

If you have a regular double-sided drive and a flippy disk with a single index hole:

There is currently no way how to solve such situation using RIDE. A workaround is to use a third-party software that can generate an artificial index pulse, provided the underlying double-sided drive can actually work without observing an index pulse. One such third-party software is the Greaseweazle Host Tools. With having a complete magnetic flux image of both sides created using one such third-party tool, you can return to RIDE to further work with, e.g. convert it to a more suitable image for emulation (see how).