Original air dates January and February 1975. Off go the travellers.
(more…)Author Archive
Story 076: The Ark in Space
Monday, May 26th, 2025Story 075: Robot
Friday, May 23rd, 2025Original air dates December 1974 through January 1975. First episode with Tom Baker. Off a blu-ray disc with incredibly long trailers.
(more…)Story 074: Planet of the Spiders
Thursday, May 22nd, 2025Original air dates May and June of 1974. Last serial with Jon Pertwee, a regeneration episode, yay!
(more…)Creating Floppy Disc Image Files
Wednesday, May 21st, 2025I’m doing some retrocomputing, and needed floppy image files to do things. It’s fine to download them off the ‘net, but once in a while you just need a blank floppy image.
I needed 1.2MB disks for my Coherent virtual machine, and couldn’t easily find how to create them. 2.88MB disk images are useful for making bootable CD ROM images, or were. Everyone said how to create 1.44MB 3.5″ disc images, and that’s not what I needed, so here’s how to create all the common sizes.
They’re easy to make, under Linux, anyway:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/new/image.img bs=512 count=<sectors>
The size in count determines what size of floppy image this is:
Size | Type | Form Factor | Sectors |
360KB | DSDD | 5.25″ | 720 |
1.2MB | DSHD | 5.25″ | 2400 |
720KB | DSDD | 3.5″ | 1440 |
1.44MB | DSHD | 3.5″ | 2880 |
2.88MB | DSED | 3.5″ | 5760 |
This sector list came from this Floppy Disk Information page and is here mostly so I don’t lose it.
Once you have a floppy image, you can put a FAT file system on it with mkfs:
/sbin/mkfs.msdos /path/to/new/image.img
(Note that you should be able to skip the dd and use -C with mkfs.msdos, but the sizing is then in blocks not sectors.)
Neither of those commands requires special access; they’re just operating on files you own. To mount the floppy image requires root access:
sudo mount -o loop /path/to/new/image.img /path/to/mount
Use umount to remove the mount and free the floppy image for other use:
sudo umount /path/to/mount
If you don’t have sudo access, you can use mtools to manipulate the floppy image directly without mounting it. They used to be quite commonly installed, but I suspect are not as frequently availble now. They’re available in all the usual places, see the man pages. To install them on OpenSUSE Linux you can use the package manager, but it needs root access again:
sudo zypper install mtools mtools-doc
This gives you access to mcopy, mcd, etc. I usually just mount the disc as above and then copy files to that path with cp.
Story 073: The Monster of Peladon
Sunday, May 18th, 2025Original air dates March – April of 1974.
(more…)Story 072: Death to the Daleks
Saturday, May 17th, 2025Original air dates February and March of 1974. A Terry Nation serial for real Dalek goodness.
(more…)Story 071: Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Saturday, May 17th, 2025Original air dates January through February of 1974. Six part serial. I’m watching this on a different computer and the wifi may be flaky. Episode 1 appears to be in black and white. Odd, the DVD menu samples aren’t.
(more…)Story 070: The Time Warrior
Wednesday, May 14th, 2025Original air dates December 1973 through January 1974. First of Season Eleven. New companion coming in! Last season of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. Four parter, nice and short.
(more…)Story 069: The Green Death
Tuesday, May 13th, 2025Original air dates May through June of 1973. Not Ranier Ale.
(more…)Story 068: Planet of the Daleks
Sunday, May 11th, 2025Original air dates April through May of 1973.
(more…)