Reading and Writing Real RX50 Floppies

The emulator is not able to read and write real RX50 floppies directly. However, on a Linux system, it is possible to convert RX50 floppies to disk image files, and vice versa. A 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy drive is needed for this. The following entry should be added to the /etc/fdprm file on the Linux system that has the floppy drive attached: # size sec/t hds trk stre gap rate spec1 fmt_gap RX50 800 10 1 80 0 0x14 0x01 0xDF 0x18 Then, assuming the 5.25" floppy drive is /dev/fd1, the RX50 parameters should be set from a shell prompt (as root) with: setfdprm /dev/fd1 RX50 Next, the dd command can be used to read and write RX50 floppies. For example, to convert an entire floppy into an image file: dd if=/dev/fd1 of=floppy_image This should produce a 409,600 byte file. To write an entire floppy from such a file: dd if=floppy_image of=/dev/fd1 I have had very good luck reading Pro floppies this way. However, for disks that I have written, I've had some problems reading the last couple of tracks on a real Pro.