Ultimax II Floppy disks

[rbalister]

Does anyone know the format of the floppies on the Ultimax II or have a PC program that reads them? I would like to be able to read the disks, (and possibly write to them) using a PC.

I realize that they're a different format from a PC so they can't be read directly.

[bloke]

They were double sided, double density 720k disks. You can try to use 1.44mb disks by covering the hole with tape and formatting on the machine.
The conversational programs can't be read on a pc, it will appear to be rubbish.

[rbalister]

I understand that the disks are not formatted as FAT16 or even FAT12 as would be expected of a 720K disk. Instead Hurco decided to create a different format. What I'm after is the data structure that they used to write the data on the disk. (i.e. file name formats, data block offets, directory structure, etc.) My intent was to write something, if it didn't exist, that could translate the disks into something useable on a PC.

Once you have the data format of the disk, writing a program to read a disk is usually pretty straight forward. Writing to the disk is a little harder especially if the files are stored in non-contiguous sectors. If you don't have the format, then you have to snoop around on the disk and try to decipher the bytes; a harder but still a fun puzzle. Sometimes being a software engineer does come in handy.