I have about 100 disks that I would like to backup to DSK files. These are all 360KB. What is the best tool to do this?

I've tried DCOPY, but without luck. I think the problem is M$ Windows XP, that I'm running.

It is. Maybe if you have an MS-DOS boot floppy, you just might get things to work. Otherwise, there's little to do but to copy the disks to a MSX-CF or MSX-HDD, I'm afraid...

Oh crap. Buy a new PC and do your job on MSX... Well... what should I expect.
I have also old Win98 PC, but I think I'll do the job on MSX. It is so easy and simple that way...

Or install a real OS on your PC Copying disks will become as easy as

cat /dev/fd0 > image.dsk

Linux: (e.g.: get a Knoppix CD if you don't want to install it )

cat /dev/fd0 > file.dsk

if that doesn't work for some reason (autodetection fails), you can try:

cat /dev/fd0u360 > file.dsk

Or try

cat /dev/fd0d360 > file.dsk 

this depends a bit on the system. Check

man fd

on your Linux system to see what is the best thing. On Debian (and thus probably also Knoppix), it should be fd0u360:

       3.5 inch double density device files:
       Name         Capac.   Cyl.   Sect.   Heads   Base minor #
       ----------------------------------------------------------
       fdnu360      360K     80     9       1       12

EDIT: you take the words out of my mouth (?) AuroraMSX

Using the Win98 machine to make images of those 360K disks sounds like a good idea. XP indeed has issues with formats which aren't that standard anymore... or at least to M$. If I can't get stuff backed up on XP I always use the Win98 machine myself to get those backups going.

Has anyone ever tried to set the BIOS setting of the diskdrive to 360k? AFAIK that option is still available in quite a few BIOS-es. I wonder what WinXP would do with that... simply ignore it, or....

Quote:

EDIT: you take the words out of my mouth (?) AuroraMSX

/me washes hands ...

The next challenge is to create a disk image of a copy-protected disk
I.e. a disk with rotten sectors, or having a 10-sector track, stuff like that...
I think that even Linux will choke on that one (well, actually the FDD itself will)
Such disks need a really raw disk image format: a file format which also stores e.g sector lead-in and -out. Creating an image on a PC is probably out of the question, then.

Or read it with a genuine Amiga[tm]. Wonderful machine for handling different disk formats.

Quote:

Or read it with a genuine Amiga[tm]. Wonderful machine for handling different disk formats.

Right ! Amiga hardware rocks for this purpose.
XP hates older formats, DOS is DOS and works fine and Linux requires a bit (sic) of getting used to and has a learning curve better spent on MSX

An older PC with networked WIN98 is my solution too for MSX floppy exchange!

Linux takes very little getting used to. Well, depends what you're used to (I was used to MSX and Solaris, well it took very little getting used to!)

For just this purpose, a KNOPPIX cd would do fine. It's very userfriendly and I already typed the commands.

You can also write a small util that uses Simon Owen's floppy driver.

fdrawcmd.sys
http://simonowen.com/fdrawcmd/

Tutorial
http://simonowen.com/fdrawcmd/docs/

hey, kewl

I use windows 2000, I used DSKMGR to create a DSK image of a copy protected 360k without any issues. The issue I think is XP and its lack of support for legacy hardware.

jup, me useing w2kpro and no worries so far. xp... pffff. to much of nothing if ya'd ask me.
might be something so add fdraw to dskman aps or sumpfn