PPFBU aka Player Piano Floppy Backup Utility is Mark Fontana’s new, as of March 2013, utility for backing up your floppy disks and converting those Yamaha files to MIDI files. The program and instructions can be found at: http://www.kinura.net/ppfbu/
The program will convert PianoSoft, PianoSoftPlus and PianoDisc files to standard MIDI files.
He is also the creator of the marvelous MID2PianoCD that also converts the floppy files to MP3. His new website is: http://www.kinura.net/mid2pianocd/
There is some urgency for owners of this music to back up their disks. Floppy disk medium is aging. These programs that allow conversion of proprietary formats to standard MIDI files enable people to be able to use their older Disklaviers with new hardware like smart phones and tablets.
I spent the afternoon playing with this software and find it works beautifully. Unfortunately for me, I have several Pianosoft discs that work fine in my Disklavier but cannot be seen by any of the four different computers I used for these tests. The one utility that was able to make a new copy of these pranged disks was the Giebler Utility on the Windows XP computer. I used some new DS/DD diskettes (1 hole, 720k) to make new copies identical to the originals. Fortunately, both PPFBU and YamPlayer saw the new copies and conversions to MIDI files were made.
Thank you so much Mark Fontana for facilitating the preservation of this music!
Carol Beigel