khat17
09-29-2007, 07:39 PM
Most people don't even use floppies anymore. If you either work on severs or have your old bootable diskettes or customized boot diskettes that are needed for working on specialized hardware, you should know what I'm talking about.
Even though the floppy drive is basically dead for the PC user, there are still some applications and environments that require the use of a floppy. What to do in these instances?
WINIMAGE (http://www.winimage.com/)
This has been the standard software that I've known of to deal with floppy images, but for the whopping price of USD$30 it leaves much to be desired. It has a lot of features, but for the basica operations of creating a floppy image and SFX files, it still is a bit much.
FLOPPY IMAGE CREATOR 5 (http://www.tucows.com/preview/387829)This I happened to stumble across online. For USD$15 it's not bad. Does what WINIMAGE does in terms of floppy disk manipulation, and comes with it's own virtual floppy drive. Problem is, the creator's website doesn't seem to have the software anymore, and it's a demo. Still working with it to see when the demo expires.
FLOOPY (http://www.maxpert.net.tc/)
This was another stumble upon. It's free (for now?) and has two basic functions: Image a floppy, or write an image to a floppy. The installer is somewhat basic, and just extracts the files to your PROGRAM FILES folder (no registry entries or such IMO - didn't check) and then you can move around the folder to anywhere you want and the EXE still runs. For what you'd need to do (image or create SFX and restore) and for the price (free) this will be my choice - until they start pricing it (hopefully they wont).
Each application seems to have it's own proprietary formats (one of the formats is cross-compatible I think....) so switching from one to another will be a bit of a pain unless you're up to doing it all over again. The good thing is that you can travel with your images or SFX and use a USB floppy drive or available floppy drives on machines where you're going in order to get the required disks for the job.
*EDIT*
Wow this thread is old. Anyways - I found a far better application. EMT4WIN (http://dvalot.free.fr/emtcopy.htm). It's free and it can do floppy imaging and creation of self-extracting images. As for programs that can allow you to boot from your flash drive, there's a lot of free ones out there. Just do a search in google. Here's a sample result from google (http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm) to get you started off.
PeAcE.
Even though the floppy drive is basically dead for the PC user, there are still some applications and environments that require the use of a floppy. What to do in these instances?
WINIMAGE (http://www.winimage.com/)
This has been the standard software that I've known of to deal with floppy images, but for the whopping price of USD$30 it leaves much to be desired. It has a lot of features, but for the basica operations of creating a floppy image and SFX files, it still is a bit much.
FLOPPY IMAGE CREATOR 5 (http://www.tucows.com/preview/387829)This I happened to stumble across online. For USD$15 it's not bad. Does what WINIMAGE does in terms of floppy disk manipulation, and comes with it's own virtual floppy drive. Problem is, the creator's website doesn't seem to have the software anymore, and it's a demo. Still working with it to see when the demo expires.
FLOOPY (http://www.maxpert.net.tc/)
This was another stumble upon. It's free (for now?) and has two basic functions: Image a floppy, or write an image to a floppy. The installer is somewhat basic, and just extracts the files to your PROGRAM FILES folder (no registry entries or such IMO - didn't check) and then you can move around the folder to anywhere you want and the EXE still runs. For what you'd need to do (image or create SFX and restore) and for the price (free) this will be my choice - until they start pricing it (hopefully they wont).
Each application seems to have it's own proprietary formats (one of the formats is cross-compatible I think....) so switching from one to another will be a bit of a pain unless you're up to doing it all over again. The good thing is that you can travel with your images or SFX and use a USB floppy drive or available floppy drives on machines where you're going in order to get the required disks for the job.
*EDIT*
Wow this thread is old. Anyways - I found a far better application. EMT4WIN (http://dvalot.free.fr/emtcopy.htm). It's free and it can do floppy imaging and creation of self-extracting images. As for programs that can allow you to boot from your flash drive, there's a lot of free ones out there. Just do a search in google. Here's a sample result from google (http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm) to get you started off.
PeAcE.