File Downloads

[66hiker]

Here is a newbie question, now that i have repository access, how does one go about transferring a downloaded file from a modern laptop onto my 1980's CIAB microbee. Sure the CIAB has a 3.5in disk drive, but i'm assuming that the disks would be a different format to even my old 486 IBM which had  3.5in drive, and the laptop only has USBs. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and learning something. Thanks.

[MbeeTech]

Hello 66Hiker,

There are a number of ways you could go.

A great utility for writing out floppy disk images is UBeeDisk - a companion program to the Ubee512 emulator.
It is a bit of a pain to use with lots of command line options and a bit of a learning curve, but once mastered it is a great tool.
UbeeDisk & Ubee512 are hosted by the Microbee-MSPP forum - you can download them from there, and as they are in the public repository there, you don't need an account.

Another way, if the file is a WAV file, is to record the audio of the WAV file to a cassette via the audio out of your PC.

Chickenman is the best one to talk to about all of this.

[ChickenMan]

As Ewan said, get hold of Ubeedisk.  Yes, the format of all the different types of Microbee disks are unique and your 486 PC cant read them directly.  But with ubeedisk, it can be used to both read and write to a Microbee floppy as well as many other types of CP/M disks

If you downloaded a games file such as arcade_2_ss80.dsk, the ss80 part of its name indicates its a Single Sided 80 track disk image, exactly what the CIAB uses.  Install ubeedisk including the fdrawcmd.sys driver (Google will find it) on your 486 PC.  Copy your downloaded image to the ubeedisk folder, then from a command prompt/dos window and with a Double Density 3.5" floppy in the drive (DONT use the 1.44mb High Density disks) use this to write the image to the floppy :

ubeedisk --format=ss80 --if=arcade_2_ss80.dsk --of=a:

That will format the disk to SS80 requirements, the --if is the Input File and the --of  is the Output File or Drive.

If you downloaded one the files with its name starting with Honeysoft, such as honeysoft_penny_arcade_t4.dsk, these were a special non-cp/m disk as their form of copy protection and the same file can be written to both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies  So to write these back to a 3.5" disk, use this line instead

ubeedisk --format=hs350 --if=honeysoft_penny_arcade_t4.dsk --of=a:

If all went will, your new Microbee floppy should work in your CIAB.  Not all images are bootable, just use SETUP on your CIAB Master disks to transfer the CIAB boot track to your floppy.

Floppies, even new old stock, vary considerably from brand to brand and batch to batch so they may even gum up the floppy drives heads, you can use a cotton tip with metho or ipa to clean them, but use care not to disturb the heads out of alignment.  Best is to use a head cleaning disk, you can still buy them off ebay.

Any issues or further questions, just ask.  Let us know how you got on though.