The tool I was looking for was on the disk that came with my recent PCMCIA->CompactFlash reader.

D'oh!

-=-=-

Of course I originally grabbed the PCMCIA/CompactFlash driver from the disk when it arrived, but I never thought to consider using the ADF tool on it.
"Surely a semi-official tool wouldn't allow commercial piracy..?!" But yeah, it does.
So now I can grab backups of some of my old games in the situations where my original disks no longer seem to work.
I mean, they have pretty much been sitting in a drawer, abandoned, for a good 25 years or so.
They can't all be perfect disks, any more.


Well, technically the "disks" are ok, it's the contents on some of them that have become corrupt.
If you format/rewrite the contents, the disks actually seem to cope really well.

First test, Arcade Pool.
My original disk no longer loaded, with a read error blocking it from finishing off a proper boot.
A few days ago I tried duplicating an "Arrrrr, piracy" downloaded backup onto the disk, using the tool TransADF, but then the disk just plain didn't work at all. I'm assuming it's a boot-sector issue, or that TransADF simply won't "do" piracy.

So, last night I grabbed the disk that came with the PCMCIA reader, and found a "ADFBlitzer" tool that was on it.
First test, Arcade Pool again!
..Put the old broken Arcade Pool disk in, hit the Write button, select the .adf file, then wait for a bit.
Once complete, I rebooted the Amiga and it indeed loaded Arcade Pool from the disk.
\o/yeay\o/

Then I played it for about an hour or so.

And it was good!

I've since found ADFBlitzer on Aminet, and that it was coded in BlitzBasic of all things.
Who'd've thunk it!?