Now, here's the easiest and most retro-guaranteed solution, you can have as much games as you like on real 3'' floppies, as long as you have some of them around as spares, to fill them with fresh software.
This is a rather simple task, but I have found no specific page on the web explaining what is to be done, and after a recent request by [mention]flatduckrecords[/mention] , I decided to make a little step-by-step guide.
All we need is:
- Our little +3
- A gotek USB floppy emulator, already flashed with the latest FlashFloppy firmware
- An old 34-pin floppy drive ribbon cable from an old PC, with connectors for 5.25 and 3.5'' drives
- Some 3'' disks
- An external 5VDC supply, for the gotek (optional)
The great news is that NO PCs AT ALL need to be involved, except, of course, for downloading our .DSK files from the web and writing them on the USB stick to be used with the gotek. So this way the transfer has a very high retro-factor, as the +3 itself does almost all the job of copying/transferring on and from its disks!
Most of us in here are more or less users/collectors of what we today call "retro" computers, not only Spectrums but also of other brands and various models. I personally prefer to say "old home computers" or "8-16bit computers", as I've been using many of them since they weren't retro at all!
I find it very unlikely for the majority NOT to have at least one CPC6128 somewhere, with a couple of 3'' disks. So here's a good source with 1-2 disks that we don't want or we have double. Also, if you have a 6128, Atari ST or Amiga, you most likely already know very well about gotek and FlashFloppy firmware. If you don't, there are a lot of tutorial videos around the web which demonstrate and explain the flashing procedure.
If you already own a 6128 with gotek or with external 3.5'' floppy drive, you have all your necessary gear ready for use. THE CABLING IS EXACTLY THE SAME for the 6128 and the Speccy +3, either for a 3.5'' real floppy drive or a gotek flashed with FlashFloppy, used as secondary (combined with the internal) or as standalone primary drives, connected externally.
You can see a very nice guide for the CPC with 3.5'' floppy drive here:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Guide_o ... #The_Cable
which applies AS-IS, NOT A DIFFERENCE AT ALL for the Spectrum +3 with its internal 3'' drive as primary and an external gotek as secondary (which can be properly jumpered to become primary, as well)... The hardest part if we don't already have the bits and bobs is to locate the ribbon cable, but they appear rather often at feebay and other similar selling sites. We can of course rip one off from a very old PC box, or build one from scratch, if we find the connectors (the ribbon itself is easy)... I mentioned the 5VDC PSU for the gotek as optional, because we can easily take the 5V from inside the computer with a piece of lead, if we like. That depends on our taste...
As soon as we are ready with our +3, its internal A: floppy drive and the externally connected gotek set up as B:, we just do the following:
1) To write .DSK on real 3'' floppies:
- Load on drive B: (gotek) a .DSK image with Disk Utilities 54 and any other .DSK images that contain the software we want to write on real disks.
- Through +3 BASIC, boot from B: (using LOAD "B:" and LOAD "DISK"). N.B. that the BASIC loader somewhere triggers on drive A:, so we have to alter a couple of lines and save it back to the diskimage, in order to become drive letter-independent. I assume we all know how to do that, but if someone doesn't, feel free to PM me! I can send my own diskimage of DU54, already altered to run directly from B: or from A: without problems.
- After complete loading of DU54, don't forget to select your desired .DSK on gotek, to be used as source. I personally left the .DSK with DU54 and this was the first thing (second was CP/M Plus, third Tiratok Demo by DeMarche) to copy on a real disk, as I can afterwards boot directly with the initial menu LOADER from the real disk and avoid giving BASIC commands to boot from B: every time I want to make another copy!
- Put in internal 3'' drive A: a write enabled disk (must be already formatted or you'll have to format it with DU54 before proceeding with copy), then select COPY with SOURCE B: and DESTINATION A: from the menu, and after a while you're ready!!!
That's it, nothing more to do. You can then reset/power off the machine and boot directly from A: with the main menu LOADER (if your disk is bootable)... Of course, if you don't like having the gotek attached any more, you can gat rid of it after having finished writing to your real disks and you'll have an absolutely original +3 setup to go with!!
Have fun!!!
N.B. that if we don't have/don't want to use a gotek, the whole job can be also done with a real 3.5'' floppy drive attached as secondary on the +3, BUT it will be MUCH more time-consuming (transfer .DSK to 3.5'' floppies and then from the 3.5'' floppies copy to 3'' with the internal drive) and complicated, with the need of an old PC with floppy drive involved, though the retro-factor will be the highest possible, as we are avoiding the "modern" USB stuff...
2) To backup real floppies to .DSK using the same procedure vice versa:
I have not completely succeded (yet) to doing that with DU54 and I suspect that this is a problem of the software, it gives me "Disk Changed" and "Verify Error" messages. I have nevertheless successfully formatted a random .DSK and copied some stuff on it through +3 BASIC, so the FlashFloppy firmware definitely supports writing on gotek. Of course we can go for a file-by file copy option, but what about sending the whole 40tracks of one 3'' disk side to a .DSK?
I don't know any other disk-to-disk copier utility similar to DU54 for the +3, I am open to your suggestions. What I am trying to do here works 100% out-of-the-box in other similar cases, e.g. with external gotek and Amiga 500, using track to track copiers like X-COPY. Dunno why I couldn't do it on the +3 with DU54, I was sure that it would be done and I'm surprised that it isn't.
Perhaps it could be done with Discology on an 6128? Too bored to try right now, but it's surely an interesting experiment to do...
I also noticed that CP/M Plus, even though it boots and seems to work fine, behaves strangely with DISCKIT, always asks to remove disks from the drives, even with both disk/diskimage removed....
I am leaving the rest to all of you to discover and perhaps add some more info here about what I'm missing on this second part!
I hope you enjoyed reading so far, thank you for your patience! I also hope that you'll manage to write lots of 3" disks with your favourite stuff and have a good time with it!
Cheers and stay "retro"!!!
