Dialog Floppy Read

Read Disk (Floppy Drive)

The Read Disk (Floppy Drive) workflow reads the contents of a physical floppy disk from a standard Windows floppy drive (A: or B:) and imports the result as a new disk image.

This is a direct PC BIOS / floppy-controller workflow and is independent of the Greaseweazle and Kryoflux flux-based workflows documented under the Flux menu.

The workflow uses two dialogs:

1. The Choose Disk Type dialog selects the format to read at.
2. The Read progress dialog reports per-track progress and handles errors.

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How to Open

• Menu: Disk -> Read Disk in Drive A
• Menu: Disk -> Read Disk in Drive B

The menu items are enabled only when the corresponding drive letter is available and the drive reports that a disk is inserted.

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Step 1 - Choose Disk Type

When the drive is opened successfully, DiskImageTool attempts to read sector 0 of the disk and examine the BIOS Parameter Block to identify the format.

The Choose Disk Type dialog is then shown:

• The drop-down lists the standard floppy disk formats supported by DiskImageTool.
• If a known format was detected, it is preselected and marked (Detected).
• If no format could be detected, a warning is shown and the list contains an Unknown placeholder selection; Ok remains disabled until a usable format is selected.

Selecting a format and clicking Ok starts the read.

Buttons

• Ok
  Confirms the selected format and begins reading the disk.
• Cancel
  Aborts the workflow without reading the disk.

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Step 2 - Reading the Disk

Once the format has been confirmed, the Read progress dialog is shown.

The dialog tracks progress one cylinder at a time, using the same track grid style as the other disk dialogs:

• Separate grids for Side 0 and Side 1 (Side 1 is disabled for single-sided formats).
• Rows represent the tens digit of the track number, columns represent the ones digit.

Each cell reflects the status of the corresponding track.

Track Status Colors

• Blue — Track is currently being read
• Light Green — Track was read successfully
• Red — Track read failed

A cell marked red additionally shows the number of bad sectors detected on that track.

Status Bar

• Action — the current operation (Reading, Complete, Aborted).
• Track nn Side n — the track currently being read.
• Bad Sectors — a running total of bad sectors, updated when errors are encountered.

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Error Handling

If a track cannot be read cleanly, a standard Abort / Retry / Ignore message box is shown:

• Abort
  Stops the read and closes the progress dialog. No image is saved.
• Retry
  Re-reads the same track from the beginning of the track.
• Ignore
  Counts the bad sectors toward the running total and advances past the failing track, continuing the read with the next track. If this was the last track, the read ends and an image is still produced using whatever data was read successfully.

When the read finishes (either normally or via repeated Ignore choices) the captured buffer is written to a new .ima file and loaded into the workspace as the active image.

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Buttons

Abort / Close

The button in the progress dialog acts as Abort while the read is in progress and becomes Close once the operation ends.

• Abort
  Requests cancellation. Confirmation is required before the worker actually stops.
• Close
  Closes the progress dialog after the read has finished.

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Notes

• This dialog uses the Windows floppy-driver stack and is subject to whatever formats the drive and driver actually support. For non-standard or copy protected disks, use the flux-based workflow (see Read Disk).
• Read images are created as basic sector .ima files.
• On a successful read, the new image becomes the active image in the workspace.
• If the read is aborted, no image is saved.