Encapsulation of Floppy Disks

Embird Embroidery Software Tutorial

This tutorial explains how to encapsulate the contents of a floppy disk. Encapsulation of a floppy disk is useful when you need to transfer the entire contents of a non-standard floppy disk (e.g., Barudan FDR, Barudan FMC, ZSK, etc.) via the Internet to a customer who does not have Embird software and needs only the correct floppy disk for sewing.

Non-standard floppy disks are disks with designs stored in a special format. These disks are not recognized and cannot be accessed in Windows Explorer or in common file managers; these applications report a "Disk is not formatted" error when you attempt to read the floppy disk contents. In Embird, you can access non-standard floppy disks via the Left Panel menu of the Manager window. However, non-standard floppy disk formats require low-level access, and therefore, non-standard floppy disks are supported only when running Embird in Windows 98 or Windows ME. Embird does not support non-standard floppy disks when running in Windows NT, 2000, or XP.

During the encapsulation process, Embird will prepare a standalone executable file (.EXE) which you can attach to an e-mail  and send to your customer. After running this file on the recipient's PC, it will format the floppy disk and write the entire contents to the disk. This is explained in the Decapsulation of Floppy Disk tutorial.

Follow these steps to encapsulate the floppy disk:

1 - Run Embird; it will start in "Manager" mode.

2 - Insert the floppy disk into the floppy disk drive. Write your designs to this floppy disk using the steps explained in the Writing Designs to Floppy Disk tutorial.

3 - Select the "Left Panel -> Encapsulate Floppy Disk" menu (Picture No. 1).

Picture No. 1

4 - A dialog box will appear on the screen (Picture No. 2). Click the "Start Encapsulation" button.

Picture No. 2

5 - Choose the file name for the executable file that you are going to create. In this example, we are encapsulating a floppy disk which contains a three-rose design; therefore, the name of the file is "ROSES.EXE" (Picture No. 3). Click the "Save" button after choosing the correct name for your file.

Picture No. 3

6 - Click the "OK" button in the dialog box which prompts you to insert the floppy disk into drive A: (Picture No. 4).

Picture No. 4

7 - The encapsulation process will start (Picture No. 5). Wait until the entire contents of the floppy disk are encapsulated into the "ROSES.EXE" file.

Picture No. 5

8 - The executable file is now ready for sending to your customer. Run your e-mail client software and attach this file to your message.

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