Archiving old floppies

I’ve purchased some retro Acorn software for some research I’m going to do, plus I have lots of software on floppies which I want to preserve for myself as I’m contemplating going down the emulator root for riscos. I also want to archive my original copy of Black Angel as I’ve heard 4D released games in different progressive states of working. My Black Angel floppy did work.

I’ve no idea what copy protection is on the floppies I’ve recently purchased, but thought a “nybble” copy would do the job well enough. I would like an accurate representation of the floppies rather than a simple file copy as I like accurate, neat archives. Sounds simple? Not so, software preservation seems much more involved than I expected and I don’t really have time to become an expert on it. I just need a method, please, that’ll work because the discs I’ve bought won’t stand for the suck it and see approach, probably only a one-pass “get it right Bri’” approach. There’s also is what I’ve done good enough, maybe I should have bought that greazeweazel, let’s restart the whole learning process again in six months. I don’t really want to move from one obsolete format to a file format that won’t be understood by anyone in four hundred years time either, but for now I’d be very happy to run the software in RPCEmu. I plan to live forever.

What’s the difference between a dd copy from Linux to a usb floppy drive (or even Win32 Disk Imager) to, say, using omniflop on a computer with a motherboard floppy cable to a floppy drive?

Didn’t we answer this here https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/15957 ?

Ok thanks for pointing that post out. Just had a very quick read (will reread tomorrow), basically the difference is the disc controller and the usb floppy drive won’t read the disc like an installed internal floppy. I’m guessing omniflop/win 32 imager does something similar to dd, nybble copy? But omniflop also drives the floppy controller in specific ways, it’s the hardware that’s cruical here? So my options are riscpc/iyonix, or build something to use omniflop, or buy a greaseweasel. I think I’ll build a computer, use omniflop and compare output to riscpc, if they are the same jobs a good ‘un. Thanks.

https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22514

As DavidS has suggested, if you have lots of discs and potentially protected games to image, purchase a cheap Arc or RiscPC and then use ADFFS to image them. The non-protected floppies can be imaged as ADF and the protected ones as JFD, which will preserve the protection.

Feel free to discuss anything more detailed around imaging games on the JASPP forum, as this site isn’t really the most appropriate forum for it. StarDot is another site that covers the retro Acorn area and can be a good resource for assistance.

Does anyone remember downloading ’William’s’ info regarding his Floppy disc – USB driven prog/hardware project?

All suggestions, links, post redirects very valuable, and much appreciated.