Because it doesn't work yet. RedSquirrel is a Win32 application and as such is restricted to using the Win32 API. Windows doesn't support anything other than 512byte blocks on floppy/hard disks and Acorn disks use 1024 byte blocks. There are two ways around this, neither are pretty and neither work under Windows 2000. I had a half hearted attempt at writing a VXD to give me bios access but it hasn't been entirely successful. I will try again soon.

First of all, a warning: whole Debian GNU/Linux is way too large to be installed from media as small as a standard 1.44MB floppy disk - you may not find installing from floppies a very pleasant experience. Copy the Debian packages onto formatted floppy disks. Either a DOS, the native Linux "ext2", or the "minix" format will do; one just has to use a mount command appropriate to the floppy being used.

PLEASE READ THIS PARAGRAPH TWICE. NO USB external floppy drive will support Apple 400K or 800K diskettes. Period. Also, there are NO EXTERNAL SCSI-BASED floppy drives to speak of, today. Period. And Apple's older external floppy drives for 400K, 800K and 1.4Mb are intended for use ONLY with Apple Macs which already have an INTERNAL floppy drive. Period. Mac 400K and 800K diskettes are written in a unique fashion, no standard IBM-type floppy disk controller card in a PC can read them.

These notes are particular to laptops; the issue of file recover or transfer is otherwise covered in a number of FAQ questions in section 2.0, so read the adjacent responses. First, determine whether your drive is SCSI, or ATA (or IDE, same thing). A SCSI laptop hard drive has 50 pins, or possibly 54 pins (four for power); an IDE laptop hard drive has 40 or more likely 44 pins. IF the drive is IDE, you can't connect it as a SCSI drive and vice versa. Apple does not support external IDE drives.

Well first, here's the good news. Its 99% certain your disk drive is NOT broken - more likely its' drive belt has worn or broken. You can easily replace this by unscrewing the bottom plate on your SY - lots of screws but it's not difficult. There are three screws holding the drive in place - remove these and the ribbon cable connector from its' socket on the main chassis.

Opening from the File menu of the web browser on public PCs was disallowed due to a bug. Instead, public users can open documents by clicking Start button, Programs, My Computer, selecting the drive and filename.

With a program called 22disk, and an adaptor board that you can make, you can read those disks on your PC. All it takes is rearranging some of the lines on the 34 pin cable, and wiring them to the 50 pin cable, and you're in business. The interface on 8" drives and 5 1/4" drives are essentially the same. The 34 lines on a typical 5 1/4" controller are sufficient to control most 8" disk drives using soft-sectored disks.

A floppy disk drive is an economical, removable storage medium. It uses a magnetic disk. You can record or erase it and then remove it from the computer. You can use the removable disk repeatedly. Today's floppy is 3.5 inches of square, stiff plastic with a magnetic disk inside. It is called a floppy because the original disk, way back when, was large and floppy like a hound dog's ear. The term "floppy" is still with us.

Modern machines can’t read the 400k and 800k floppy disks used by the Mac Plus. This a hardware problem, not solvable in software - they lack the variable speed motor of the old drives. I don’t know any reason why some company couldn’t now manufacture a floppy drive that reads the old disks, but I’m not aware of anyone doing so. So the only way to read such disks is to get an old Mac.

Open an existing IMA file, or create a new IMA file. Browse into the IMA file inside an Explorer Window and use the "Run Tool" link or submenu. If you cannot create/open IMA files, re-install CompreXX and make sure you select the "WinImage Archives " plugin.

Open the menu with available drives (Alt+F1/F2) and open the context menu for the desired floppy disk drive (click the right mouse button or use Shift+F10 key). You can choose "Format..." or "Copy Disk..." from this menu.

Floppy Disks are extremely unreliable! Many students have lost essays and class projects as a result of a failing floppy disk. Don't let this happen to you! If you must use a floppy disk, make at least two back-up disks. Always create more than one copy of your files, and save them in multiple locations (or e-mail the file to yourself) Print out a hard copy of your document. In the event of floppy disk damage, you will still have the printed copy to work from. Beware of viruses.

Our software is too big to fit onto a floppy disk. Arrangements can be made on a case by case basis for a CD to be sent via post.

To protect files on USB Flash Drives, Memory Sticks, Pen Drives and Zip Drives, click 'Browse' and select the option 'Move to portable disk'. Then read the instructions and click the 'Next' button. Now you will be able to select the drive(s) in which you want protection. You can select these drive(s) by clicking the check boxes next to them. After that click the 'Move It' button, this will move the program folder of Folder Lock to that drive.

You may also install via hard disk and initrd. You need a big enough hard disk to do this (and it takes a little bit more time than the usual method). The following method presumes that it is possible to access the disk using DOS. Leave a small DOS partition (with enough spare space to hold the tar files from a few install disks). The bigger that partition is, the less come and goes from DOS are needed later. However, the bigger it is, the less space is available for Linux itself.

Plug an ISA Multi-IO card, connect your floppy drive there, and flash your BIOS again, this time with one that really is for your motherboard.

Unfortunately no, we don't stock or supply any spares. What we do recommend is searching eBay for the items you need, eg "USB FLOPPY".

Select the files you want to archive in an Explorer window, and right click the selection. Choose "Compress...". Check the archive types you want to create, then click "Settings". In the "Settings" window(s) that appear, specify that you want to enable spanning onto floppy disks. All future archives you create will be spanned, until you disable this setting. Click "Details".

Because Biblioscape database tables have fixed length records, the database files are very large. But if you compress the files, a 10 MB database can easily fit onto a single floppy disk. For this you need zip software; we recommend using WinZip (www.winzip.com). Run WinZip, click on the "New" button. Select the floppy drive and give a zip file name. Click on the "Add" button and go to the directory where your Biblioscape database files are located.