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Beware that lots of "preformatted" floppies sold did not have the proper format code written to the boot sector. Old DOS and early Windows versions tried one format after the other (180K, 360K, 720K, 1440K ...) until they found one that worked.
At some stage, MS guide said 'No more! There shall be a format code in the boot sector - the standard requires it to be there!' I believe this policy change came with Windows XP (correct me if I am wrong). After that, floppies without a proper format code was treated as "This floppy seems to be unformattet - do you want to format it now?"
The only reason I have to keep a Win95 installation available is for reading that sort of floppies without a proper format code. Reading the floppy from an external USB drive doesn't change it - no 32 bit Windows will accept a floppy without a format code, regardless of drive.
So if your floppies are not correctly coded, you may have to search up someone with a genuine Win95 installation, or earlier.
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thanks for sharing your experience![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
diligent hands rule....
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I was wondering when to scrap my 5150, but with 2 5.25 floppy drives I'm starting to make money.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Do you have a 5.25" drive?
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Southmountain wrote: a legacy software
You have said too much here : what software ?
5.25" was already oldskool in 2000, how old is your software ?
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And once you got the bits off the disk (and onto another disk): Do the bits make any sense?
You may be so lucky that you know in advance which file system was used on the floppy. You may know which applications were used to create the files. You may have access to the specs for the data format in the files.
Or you may be less lucky. Old floppies may be holding proprietary file systems, with files in proprietary data formats. You can't even take for granted that space is allocated in 8-bit byte units, or that text (including file names) is represented in anything ASCII-like encoding. Maybe it is, but you won't recognize it; e.g. DECsystem mainframes stored five seven-bit ASCII characters per 36 bit word. If an application wrote its text data in 36 bit words to the file, you couldn't read it without knowledge of the format.
It seems like the OP will not encounter that kind of problems, so this comment is mostly relevant for those trying to recover even older floppies.
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it is stock analysis software I like very much!
diligent hands rule....
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I was going to suggest re-purposing a 3.5" USB enclosure as I vaguely remember the A: and B: drives using the same port on the card/motherboard even when different drive types were fitted. I would have been wrong - apparently the embedded chips in the enclosures can only handle 3.5"drives - I'm surprised they went to the bother of "restricting" them, I assumed re-using old chipsets would be cheaper. I've re-purposed old USB CD-ROMS as HDD interfaces plenty of times.
This looks fairly comprehensive (it's also where I found out my originall suggestion was bad):
How to read and write old floppy disks
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thanks for sharing that link and your thoughts
diligent hands rule....
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Hello! I'm new to the community, so hopefully this is the right place for this kind of question.
I'm looking to start learning to code. I currently live in Toronto, Canada, and have worked retail for the last few years. When I was younger I had thought about getting into the CSs, but I fell out of interest with the idea. I do enjoy working on computers and used to spend quite a bit of my time playing around on them when I was a teen, especially in design, but otherwise have no coding experience beyond what they taught us in highschool.
I have no undergraduate degree, and was thinking of possibly enrolling in a bootcamp to help me get started. There seems to be so many bootcamp options that is a bit overwhelming tbh, and many have quite a high price tag associated with them. (10-20k for 6 months)
I have a friend who is a data scientist and he tells me not to bother with the expensive boot camps, but I feel as if that structure could help me as I'm starting off pretty much blindly.
I'm looking for a bit of guidance to get started. Should I be enrolling in free introductory courses, doing self-taught tutorials, and what areas of the industry should I be focusing on. (job roles, languages, etc.)
I know this is a super open-ended question, but any information at my stage is valuable information.
Thanks guys,
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I would not pay that for those camps.
One thing you need to decide at the very beginning is the direction you want to take. There are a lot of possible directions on technology, and for each path there is a language that fits better.
What you should have by all means is a set of skills that are "language" independant.
And no matter what you go for, your best friend will be the debugger. So learn how to use it well.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Why are you against the camps?
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The camps are mainly a way to fleece you out of your money.
It takes years of practice to become a productive software developer.
It's not something that can be rammed into your brain in 3 months.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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upvote - listen to the man.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I agree with the first commenter to your question regarding BootCamps.
To become proficient in any language will take you at least 6 months of concentrated study.
However, a programming language is just a starting point. You have to decide what you want to do with it. As a result, you should start your journey with a major language such as Java, C#, or VB.NET. All of these languages can handle the entire spectrum of development.
However, you will have to ask yourself if you want to become a game developer, a business application developer, an internals developer (ie: compilers, word-processors), or enter the complex world of scientific and engineering development.
In all cases, you will have to learn how to handle a database in your applications. Only with business application development will you need to learn how to develop for the Internet, though with other development genres there is some web development (ie: Internet based games).
Your best introduction to programming can be found on one of the many online course sites such as Udemy, which have many introductory courses to programming languages as well as the other aspects of development.
In any event, if you can tell me what your aspirations are, I could provide you with some suggestions on how to begin.
Please contact me at my email address at your convenience...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Camps cram a language into your head in a short amount of time and leave you believing you know what you're doing. To be fair, people do come out of these camps knowing a language, but my experience in interviewing these candidates is not a positive one.
Unfortunately, the compressed time schedule leaves no room for the really important things -- thinking and problem solving. These are learned with practice and experience. A new college grad who spent 8 semesters learning programming has had to solve numerous problems -- and has had the time to reflect on what worked, and what didn't. This takes elapsed time and realistically, most people need 1 to 3 years of professional work experience to honestly understand what they are doing.
That said, I give all candidates a fair hearing, and if they demonstrate problem solving and ability to think, their background is far less important.
Take a couple of free Intro courses to see if you want to do this.
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Amen.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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LoganJM wrote: I currently live in Toronto
Which is where CodeProject is based ...
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.. and yet: itself[^] ... flys the American flag. Must be an Iron Maiden fan.
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If I recall correctly, US was the default country when you sign up.
Either that or he subscribes to the "America's Hat" theory.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Habs ... wow, that sounds racist doesn't it? I'll show'em ... "I had no intention of whiting any sepulcer in the posting of this comment". There. Habs.
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Or during these days, “America’s Hat” conspiracy.
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RedDk wrote: Must be an Iron Maiden fan
There's obviously some reference I'm missing here. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Elodia too!
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2 for 2, you're batting 1.000.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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