[Coco] Advice on copying old floppies

[Robert Gault]

Carey Eugene wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I need some advice on making disk images of some old CoCo disks.
> 
> I'm doing some cleaning in my garage and I'm going to throw away all my old CoCo stuff.  The CC3, CC2, the floppy, 6 or 8 years of the Rainbow, most of The Color Computer mags, lots of programs that I [cough] 'acumulated' back then, etc. etc.  Even the stuff I actually bought, like Pascal09, Deft Pascal, Roger S. Young's chess program, games, etc.  And probably 100 pounds of CoCo magazines.
> 
> I've put this off for 5+ years, but I haven't looked at that stuff in that time, I'm not likely to ever do so again.  I used to really love the CoCo.  I used it for a long time.  I have some very fond memories.  But it's time to let it go.  Tossing it in the trash is going to hurt, but I live in a small town.  There's nobody around here that'd want the stuff.
> 
> Anyway, before I do that, I want to make disk images of my important RSDOS and OS9 (360k) floppies.  Out of 500 disks, I fortunately only care about 100 of them.  Mostly stuff I wrote.  I don't need it, but I don't want to loose them, either.
> 
> Unfortunately, it doesn't look like my PC 1.2m floppy drive can read them.  It can read the 5.25" PC disks (so the floppy is working), but it can't handle the CoCo disks.
> 
> I know this is a well known issue.  The PC floppy controller sucks compared to what the CoCo's could do.  The PC controller just can't handle data that quickly after the index hole.
> 
> But I'm wondering what a good solution is.
> 
> I no longer have a serial cable, so I can't hook up my CoCo to my PC and transfer them that way.  It'd be rather tedious to transfer 100 floppies at 2400 baud anyway.
> 
> Right off hand, the only thing I can think of is to find one floppy that the PC can read, and then use that to copy the old disks over to it one at a time.  Agonizingly tedious, though.
> 
> 
> Any better ideas?
> 
> 
> Carey
> 
> 

You haven't said what OS is running on your PC and that is important. 
Most of the PC programs that can read Coco Disk Basic or OS-9 disks need 
to run in DOS so can't be used with WinNT or WinXP systems.

If you are using WinXP, you have two choices that make sense. Make a DOS 
boot disk which WinXP can do and then use a program that reads a Coco 
disk. Obtain OmniFlop
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
which runs under WinXP, Win2000, and WinNT.

Also, rather than throw away your Coco related items, you may be able to 
sell them to readers of this list. Why not make a detailed list of what 
you have, post it here, and see what happens? You can throw your system 
and mags away if there is no interest.