About +3 disk images

The Spectrum +3 was fitted with a non-standard 3" (CF2) disk drive like those found in Amstrad CPC machines. This is unfortunate since the 3" (CF2) floppies that commerical software came on cannot be used in standard 3½" drives fitted to PCs.

Instead, disk images (.dsk files) have to be made from those disks for use with Spectaculator. Luckily, both Spectrum Computing and the TZX Vault both carry disk images of most of the software available.

Spectaculator allows you to use disk images just like they were real disks. Images can be formatted, read to and written from using the standard +3DOS commands.

Some users connected an external 3½" disk drive to their +3s so they could use cheaper 3½" floppies. Although +3DOS can read and write to these disks, the format command cannot format them to their full capacity. Spectaculator has a convenient format toolbar button which can format 3½ disk images to the full 720 KB.

For further details on +3DOS, see the Spectrum +3 manual - available here.

Tip

  • When creating new disk images, select the format checkbox to avoid having to format them from +3DOS.

  • Using the format toolbar button allows you to format 3½" disk images to their full 720KB capacity.

Note

  • Treat disk images just like real disks - do not reset the Spectrum or exit Spectaculator while the Spectrum is reading or writing to a disk image.