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Full Version: Easiest way to get Amiga floppy contents as files, on a Mac
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I just got the SuperCard Pro with a Sony MPF920 floppy drive and it's working great. I have some old Amiga floppies from almost 30 years ago that I want to archive as directory hierarchies. I am doing this on a Mac and I'm curious if there's a more direct way than what I figured out so far.

My process currently is:

1.) I run Windows 10 in VMware Fusion on the Mac
2.) In the Windows WM, I run the SCP app
3.) I create .adf files from my Amiga floppies
4.) Still in the Windows VM, I run a utility called "unadf" to extract the adf floppy image contents do a directory/file hierarchy
5.) I then copy that resulting directory hierarchy from the Windows VM over to the host macOS

The result of step 5 is the end goal. I.e. I am not interested in running an Amiga emulation or archiving the floppies exactly. I just want the directory/file content on my Mac.

Is there a more direct way to do this, especially from the Mac?

- Is there any software that can control the board from macOS directly?
- Is there any software that can extract the directory hierarchy from an .adf (or .scp) image and that is known to work on macOS? I could try to get the unadf tool to build on macOS, but if there's something else that already works on macOS that would save me some work.

It seems there are not many options to extract the contents of an .adf image, is there something other than unadf? Is there a tool that can do this if I save the images to the .scp format instead, or is that too low-level of a representation?
You can use the HxC Floppy Drive Emulator software. The source code is available and I know it has been compiled for Linux at one point. Maybe for the Mac too? I am not sure.

There is nothing for the Mac that can control the SCP board directly, but there is source code out there to do that for Linux setups, using Keir Disk Utils.

For the PC there are several options for mounting .adf image files and reading/writing them like they were a drive.

It seems that your approach is about the norm for doing things. You can to convert from flux to .adf using something (like the SCP software) and then from .adf using something that can handle the Amiga's file system. There really is no short cut available because most people want disk images for use with emulators, not the actual files from the disks.
OK thanks for the confirmation that this is probably the best path for what I want to do. I'm fine running the board control software in the VM.

I did notice, as you mention, that the focus of many of the tools is more on accurate preservation of the images for running with an emulator, not just getting at the file contents.

Can the HxC software perform the file extraction? I looked at it and it seemed to be able to convert between image formats, but it didn't seem to "understand" the actual file system structure in the image.

Lastly, is the .scp format better than the .adf one? Does one preserve more information than the other?

Thanks again. This board and the software are really an excellent product at a fair price. I especially like the funny silk screen labeling on the board Smile
HxC has a "file browser" option. I have used it for PC disks, but I have never tried it for Amiga disks. I don't know if AmigaDOS is supported, but it could be.

.scp images are flux level. They contain 100% of the original magnetic flux transitions. This means that everything the original disk has the image will have as well, including any form of copy-protection. .adf images are sector level, so they are lacking any possibility of containing copy-protection. You can select .scp image files under most emulators.