HP Forum Archive 18

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How to write HP-9121 floppies from a PC ? Message #1 Posted by Pascal on 15 Mar 2008, 9:45 a.m. I have a set of floppies of windows 1.03 for the HP-150. They are single sided, double density disks with a capacity of 270KB. This format is compatible with the HP-9121 disk drive and is unfortunately not compatible with standard DOS or Windows. Some of the floppies have bad sectors and 2-3 files are not readable. For example the Windows Write disk that contains the write.exe file has a bad sector. I think I have found a way to work this out by taking the write.exe from another set of windows 1.03 disks that I have that is for the HP Vectra (5.25", 360KB). The file size and date is exactly the same so I assume it will also work on the HP-150. In order to transfer the write.exe to the HP-9121 floppy, I would need a software that can read & write to this special format from within DOS or Windows. So far I found a software that can format and copy such disks from Windows, it's called Omniflop. It can create image files of hp-9121 floppies but it's not possible to edit those file in order to inject files. So I'm stuck here and I wonder if anyone would have a good idea to help me continue this project. Any suggestion ?

Re: How to write HP-9121 floppies from a PC ? Message #2 Posted by Raymond Del Tondo on 15 Mar 2008, 10:49 a.m., in response to message #1 by Pascal Hi, you could also try a completely different approach. Why not transfer files over a serial link, using a terminal program? AFAIK the HP-150 has a serial port, and I once had a HP-150II unit with HP-IL interface;-) Raymond

Re: How to write HP-9121 floppies from a PC ? Message #3 Posted by Pascal on 16 Mar 2008, 4:24 a.m., in response to message #2 by Raymond Del Tondo That's an excellent suggestion, I will give it a try and let you know the result.

Re: How to write HP-9121 floppies from a PC ? Message #4 Posted by Egan Ford on 15 Mar 2008, 1:19 p.m., in response to message #1 by Pascal Quote: 270KB 270? or 720? Quote: In order to transfer the write.exe to the HP-9121 floppy, I would need a software that can read & write to this special format from within DOS or Windows. Have you tried LIFUTIL for DOS? http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/redirector.jspx?action=ref&cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=1000002597-1:epsg:faq&cname=AGILENT_EDITORIAL http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/redirector.jspx?action=ref&cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=1000072149:epsg:dow&cname=AGILENT_EDITORIAL This may help: Google: lifutil site:hpmuseum.org

Re: How to write HP-9121 floppies from a PC ? Message #5 Posted by Pascal on 16 Mar 2008, 4:23 a.m., in response to message #4 by Egan Ford Thanks for the suggestion. I confirm that it's 270KB, not 720. I tried the lifutil but it seems that it was designed to handle an even older disk type which is incompatible with the 9121 disk type.

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