Writing Designs to Floppy Disks

Embird Embroidery Software Tutorial

Embird supports standard and non-standard floppy disk formats.

Standard floppy disks are disks with designs stored in standard MS-DOS format. These disks are recognized and can be accessed in Windows Explorer, a common file manager, or any other application supporting floppy disks. In Embird, you can access a standard floppy disk by choosing the disk drive (typically "A:") in the "Drive:" box in the Right Panel of the Manager window.

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 a common file manager; 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 to the floppy disk controller, and therefore, non-standard floppy disks are supported only on a non-USB floppy drive connected to a motherboard floppy port.

Writing Designs to Standard Floppy Disks (MS-DOS Format)

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

2 - Insert the floppy disk into the disk drive. Make sure that the disk is not write-protected.

3 - In the "Files:" box at the right side of the screen, select the design that you want to write to the floppy disk. To select a design, please move the mouse pointer to its file name and click the left mouse button (Picture No. 1).

Note: You can select multiple files and write them all to the floppy disk at once. Please move the mouse pointer to the file name of the first design in the "Files:" box at the right side of the screen, depress the left mouse button, and hold it down while moving the mouse pointer over the file names of the other designs. When the mouse pointer is over the last design, please release the left mouse button.

1. Select files

4 - Move the mouse pointer to the "Files:" box in the right panel and click the right mouse button for a popup menu. Choose the "Clipboard > Copy Files to Clipboard" command to copy selected designs to the clipboard. You will find this command also in the "Right Panel" menu (Picture No. 2).

2. Copy to Clipboard

5 - Choose the floppy disk drive in the right panel in the "Drive:" box (Picture No. 3).

3. Select floppy disk drive

6 - Move the mouse pointer to the "Files" box in the right panel and click the right mouse button for a popup menu. Choose the "Clipboard > Paste Designs from Clipboard" command to copy the files from the clipboard to the floppy disk. You will find this command also in the "Right Panel" menu (Picture No. 4).

4. Paste from Clipboard

7 - Embird will paste the files to the chosen drive and folder; in this example, the files will be written to the root of the "A:" drive.

Writing Designs to Non-Standard Floppy Disks (e.g., Barudan, ZSK)

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

2 - Insert the formatted floppy disk into the disk drive. Make sure that the disk is not write-protected.

3 - In the "Files:" box at the right side of the screen, select the design that you want to write to the floppy disk. To select a design, please move the mouse pointer to its file name and click the left mouse button. You can select multiple files and write them all to the floppy disk at once.

4 - Move the mouse pointer to the "Files:" box in the right panel and click the right mouse button for a popup menu. Choose the "Input/Output Operations > Copy Files to Floppy Disk" command. You will find this command also in the "Right Panel" menu (Picture No. 5).

5. Copy Files to Floppy Disk

5 - Choose the floppy disk format in the dialog box that appears on the screen (Picture No. 6). Click the "OK" button to continue.

Note: The floppy disk must be formatted with the chosen format before you start writing designs to it; please see also the tutorial Formatting Floppy Disk.

6. Choose floppy disk format

6 - You will be prompted to insert the formatted disk into the drive (Picture No. 7). Click the "OK" button to continue.

7. Insert formatted floppy disk

7 - The writing process will start. Wait until this process is finished.

8 - Once the writing is finished, a dialog box will appear on the screen, showing the result of the operation (Picture No. 8). You will see the files saved on the floppy disk in the left panel in the "Files:" box.

8. Operation result

9 - The floppy disk is now ready for use. You can eject it from the disk drive and use it with your embroidery machine.

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