[Coco] Weird errors(DSK images.. NOT!!)

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 16 September 2006 15:08, George's Coco Address wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Boisy Pitre"
>
>> After looking at the xmode.asm source and examining the compatibility
>> issue that has plagued users of tmode, I am considering a different
>> approach than the one I expressed in the email below.  Specifically,  I
>> am considering resurrecting the old tmode/xmode utilities and  renaming
>> the current "new syntax" tmode/xmode to some variant, such  as
>> tmode2/xmode2 and including those as part of an enhanced utilities 
>> package that would also include things like bawk and other commands.  
>> This utility package would be downloadable as a separate disk image 
>> alongside NitrOS-9.
>
> Since there is currently no way to put a DSK file into my coco and make
> a disk... 

George;

Is XP locked away from the hardware that tightly, that you cannot install a 
floppy disk, let the system find it, install the drivers and make use of 
it?  I'm asking because I truely don't know, and the only way I could 
attach a floppy to the only XP box I have would be via usb in an external 
case, its an HP laptop & the drives are a 100GB 2.5"er, and a lightscribe 
compatible cd/dvd burner, which FWIW, worked just fine when I made the 
backups before shrinking the xp partition from 100 to 25GB so I could 
install linux on the rest of it. It runs Fedora Core 5 99.9% of the time 
anyway. :)  Windows, bah humbug.  Spit.  Now I gotta warsh me mouth out 
with some of grandmas lie soap.  :(

> and it's impossible for me to do so on this XP box, how about 
> someone would develop a way to convert a DSK file to a disk on a coco?
> It's quite easy for me to transfer the DSK file from this XP box to my
> coco via the RS232 port. Been transferring stuff since W-95.

That shouldn't be hard at all George, once the .dsk is on the coco's hard 
drive.  Then its simply a matter of opening the dsk file for reading, and 
the raw floppy drive /dx@ for writing, where x is the drive number, and 
reading an array of sectors, say about a tracks worth, then write that to 
the raw but formatted disk until you hit the eof on the file.  That should 
work.  By definition, the .dsk is an image of that desired disk from lsn0 
to the end, either of the data to write, or the end of the disk.

The reason I said hard drive is that a full disk image in .dsk format can 
be as big as any floppy we can use.

> It's odd that someone hasn't built an application to create a DISK from
> a DSK image on a coco, or at least get the files out of it. After all,
> it's all about the coco!!!, by golly.
>
> Also, if one or two applications, such as Tmode2 and Xmode2 are the
> object, why put them on a DSK image? If they were separate files, I
> would just transfer the two files from this box, to the coco, set the
> attributes and viola! a working app.
>
> If I only used an emulator on this XP box, then I could understand the
> DSK stuff. However, I use a COCO3!.  Please make two files, one for the
> coco and one for the emulator.
>
> Actually(in this case) it would be three files. DOH!
>
>K.I.S.S. !!
>
>George

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.