As all software needs a name, I settled on “Ipmlab” (Image Portable Media Like A Boss). Next I removed everything that is specific to optical media, and made some small changes to the IsoBuster call, in order to better accommodate 3.5 inch floppies. So, I started by removing all code that controls the Nimbie disc robot, and adapted the overall worklow accordingly.
Unlike optical media, the possibilities for automating the load and unload process are limited for floppies (although some hackers have successfully repurposed vintage floppy duplicators into DIY autoloaders). So far for the theory, but as we’ll see below, things got slightly more complicated and messy along the way! Iromlab to IpmlabĪs a first step I forked the existing Iromlab code.
It also implied that Windows (10) would be the target platform. This would allow us to re-use most of the software components of the existing optical media workflow with only minor modifications. Since we already have a workflow in place for optical media, it seemed to make sense to use Iromlab (which uses IsoBuster as the main imaging application) as a starting point. In this post I’ll explain how this tool came about, and highlight some of the challenges I encountered during its development. Using the existing Iromlab-based workflow as a starting point, I created a preliminary workflow tool that can be used for imaging our 3.5” floppies (and various other types portable media). Out of these, 3.5 inch floppy disks are the most common data carriers (after optical media), so it made sense to focus on these as a next step. This project is expected to reach its completion later this year, but as demonstrated by this earlier inventory, our deposit collection also contains various other types of legacy media that are under threat of becoming inaccessible. The KB has been using Iromlab since 2019 as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information contained in its vast collection of legacy optical media. create, load and save RAW floppy images from 160KB upto 2.In 2017 I wrote a blog post on Iromlab (an acronym for “Image and Rip Optical Media Like A Boss”), a custom-built software tool that streamlines imaging and ripping of optical media using an Acronova Nimbie disc robot.It can also handle non-standard floppy images (820KB, 1.68MB, 1.72MB). It features viewing and deleting the content of any FAT formatted floppy disk image, as well as reading and writing images using a floppy disk drive.ĭiskXS supports standard 1.44″ and 5.25″ floppies from 160KB upto 2.88MB. DiskXS is a tool to handle floppy disk images.
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