[Coco] Read Coco floppies in my PC

[Frank Swygert]

Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:08:06 -0400
From: "Bill"<cwgordon at carolina.rr.com>

So basically, regardless of the OS, I still ain't gonna get any good results 'till I find me a 360.

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Well, if you just want to transfer files, you can do it. I forgot to mention that you need to format a fresh 360K disk in the 1.2M drive at 360K - Bruce reminded us of that. Either a fresh never formatted 360K disk or use a bulk eraser on it (I used to keep a big old speaker magner just for that -- works great!). Otherwise if you try to read it on a 360K drive the drive gets confused by the extraneous info on the edges of the narrow track the 1.2 drive wrote in the middle of the wider 360 track. As several of us pointed out, the data will "fade" after a few days, so a week is about as long as the data can be reliably read without errors. So for short term it's okay. I've done it and sent disks to people in the mail, but sent them the day after writing to them and noted that they needed to copy that disk to a 360K as soon as they got it. That was when I only had a 1.2 drive on my PC. I only wrote to a 360 disk if I needed to transfer text files, as I had a pair of 360K and a 720K 3.5" (and a small HD) on my main CoCo, a pair of 360K on my luggable (CoCo3 and shorty disk controller mounted in an old Kaypro II luggable case w/9" monochrome monitor).

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com