SAMdisk v3.7 by Simon Owen is out since the 24th June 2013.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.7 (2013-06-24)
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- Added support for KryoFlux and DiscFerret stream images (MFM+FM)
- Added preliminary support for D4M (FD-4000) disk images
- Added hex output with --hex or -x, with limited hex using --hex-ish
- Added --no-gap4b to ignore gap data after the final sector
- Added --abs-offsets to show absolute rather than relative sector offsets
- Fixed 'extra byte' EDSK extension being used unnecessarily on CRC errors
- Fixed crash during CPC weak sector sniffing due to no-data 4th sector
- Fixed regular image reading reporting transient disk errors
- Improved support for ED images, including 2.88M raw images
- Improved gap reading support for IPF images
- Changed raw track parsing to ignore headers with ID CRC errors
- Changed raw image writing to use only first cyl to determine format
- Relaxed D2M sniffing by removing system partition type (0xff) check
- Reduced gap sync requirement to remove more unwanted gaps

FutureOS is available as a cartridge for Amstrad CPC+.

SAMdisk v3.5 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.5 (2013-01-07)
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- Fixed interleave and skew values for Pro-Dos .cpm images
- Alignment tweaks to some output formatting
- Restored code signing to help download validation

You will find an interview of Marc Maulin, co-author of the Amstrad CPC utility Discology, on CPC Rulez.

A work in progress version of GrafX2 is available to draw "mode 5" pictures for Amstrad CPC.

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.

SAMdisk v3.3 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.3 (2012-06-14)
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- Added built-in support for zipped and gzipped files
- Added support for repairing 8K sectors with bad CRCs
- Added support for raw hard disk images
- Added identify device data reading, where available (non-USB)
- Added --hdf to force HDF version (10 or 11), with v1.1 now the default
- Added --no-identify to ignore source identify data
- Added --no-cfa to suppress CFA festures in generated identify data
- Enhanced identify to include  CHS/LBA28/LBA48 sector counts and CFA
- Enhanced verbose disk list to show serial+firmware and MBR partitions
- Changed disk list to show all devices by default, not just BDOS
- Fixed repairing to blank target tracks, with new density check
- Fixed HDD access beyond 4GB boundary, extended -s range to 2TB
- Fixed SAD image writing with custom sector sizes
- Fixed status messages being written to log and not erased correctly
- Improved FDC integrity checks during sector reads, for suspect hardware
- Improved total sector count to CHS mapping

The last version of the CPCDiskXP utility is available on CPCMania.

You will also find various programming tutorials, especially tutorials about using C compilers like Z88dk and SDCC, or assembler compiler like Pasmo.

SAMdisk v3.2 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.2 (2012-04-08)
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- Added general support for 1Mbps data rate, used by ED disks
- Added 1Mbps support to IMD images, using new track modes 6+7
- Added --tty option to output console messages to non-console streams
- Fixed crash reading gap data from oversized sectors (thanks Philippe!)
- Fixed crash using --verify when writing non-simple images
- Fixed gap data trimming when writing FDI+IMD images

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.

GrafX2 v2.3 has been released in April 2011. It can of course be used to draw Amstrad CPC screens.

SAMdisk v3.1 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Changelog:

Version 3.1 (2012-03-18)
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- Added --repair option to help combine damaged image dumps
- Added write support for D88 images
- Added support for IMD mixed sector sizes
- Added record name from source basename, if no label available
- Added more file sizes for raw image recognition
- Added verbose track output for floppy->image dumping
- Fixed IMD creation using 500Kbps instead of 250Kbps
- Fixed bit alignment during IPF track wrapping
- Fixed converting images to BDOS format when setting label
- Increased --rescan matching distance from 32 to 64 bytes
- Updated to zlib 1.2.5, using zlibwapi.dll instead of zlib1.dll

ManageDSK v0.20g by Ludovic Deplanque is out. Its interface is available in english, french and spanish. It features :

• create an empty .DSK file,
• add files in a .DSK file,
• extract files from an .DSK file,
• rename files in a .DSK file
• delete files in a .DSK file,

To write a single DSK image file you can either use :

• ManageDSK by Demoniak (windows)
• iDSK by Sid (it's an unix/macos port of ManageDsk, it seems that you will need the dsktools by Andreas Micklei)
• WriteDSK by Targhan (on Amstrad CPC only)
• CPCDiskXP by Mochilote (windows)

Beware, WriteDSK works on the CPC (you must have a PC 3,5" with the .DSK which will be copied on the same 3,5" drive or another 3" drive). It supports the CPC Booster by Antitec.

But if you want to write a double sided DSK, you will have to use CPCDiskXP by Mochilote for the moment.

P.S. : from the WriteDSK documentation, it should support double side DSK.

QuickCMD v2.3 is out, a shell-based user interface by NoRecess.

This adds support for a new command history to be used through UP and DOWN keys (was requested by many of you !). Also, a critical crash has been fixed with ROMS command when listing ROMs having corrupted names. Another critical problem (involving stability) has been fixed with direct drive parsing. And finally, the RSX got renamed to |Q for even faster switching from BASIC to QuickCMD.

To help using your HxC floppy emulator, vous can use the last version of the HxC Floppy Emulator Manager (v2.3) by NoRecess.

It's now faster to launch, spaces in directory names can now be used, and the user interface is now using the default system font with new color scheme (aligned to ParaDOS and QuickCMD's ones). As previous releases, ROM version is also available.

QuickCMD v2.2 is out, a shell-based user interface by NoRecess.

These are the changes:

• Added support for Bryce's MegaFlash
• Renamed RO and RW commands to READONLY and READWRITE
• Removed CRTC command
• Reset screen to QuickCMD’s default if external RSX changed video mode
• DELROM now clears a rom with &FF value (was using &00)
• Fixed: was overwriting first byte after HIMEM
• Fixed: not assuming anymore than Amsdos area is always at &A700