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Converting 95 CD to disks

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9 replies

by allenb3

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Is there a reliable method of converting the files on the Win 95 cd to floppy diskettes and actually have the OS install properly?
Have an old (original set) of Win 95 disks and some have become unreadable.

9 replies

by phil.hall

To be blunt: no. Although this can be done, technically, it's not something ever advised. At one time you could return the CD and get the floppies directly from MS (which a former employer of mine had to do on one occasion); but other than that I think you might be in for some trouble converting it from the CD to floppy.
Good luck to you!

by mphoffar

Although time consuming, I think your best bet is to copy the floppies into a directory on your HD, burn them to a CD run setup from there.

If you want, do an extract /a win95_XX.cab *.* where XX is the cab number (02, 03,...) just to test the integrity of the cabs. If they extract, there shouldn't be a problem with installation.

Don't know if MS will send just a single diskette. In all honesty, it'll probobly be cheaper and easier to find a used computer shop and buy a CD from them anduse the disks for bootdisks. Remember, what's important here in the liscence.

Mark

by ann777

Your bet option is to get replacement floppies for those that have gone bad.

The Win95 cd rom has 2000 KB cabinet files. The Win95 floppies that MS distributed were created with a special program that essentially reformmated the floppy disk to a 1.6 MB floppy (standard HD floppies are 1.44 MB).

You could copy the cd to floppies and use a file splitter utility -- but you will need to create a whole set of floppies to do this. And you will need the hard disk space for the whole win95 cd-rom folder and split them on to theat hard disk drive to install. And you also need space for the install. All-in-all, a extremely difficult thing to accomplish.

A better option might be copying the cd to a parallel port device (2 GB Jaz drive maybe) and then doing the install from that. I'm thinking that your computer hardware is too old to support a cd-rom drive itself?

by saihib

Those old floppys are in a special format called DMF (Distribution Media Format) This isn't something for the faint of heart. Take a look at this URL. It may be possible to do what you want to do but it looks like a lot of work.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article01-011
Close up any spaces in the URL after you paste it.

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