[Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives

[Steve Ostrom]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Hickle" <jlhickle at yahoo.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 10:59 PM
Subject: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives




I'd like to backup HDB-DOS drives from one device to another. I have SCSI 
drives. Perhaps I could use BACKUP in a loop but don't know if it's possible 
for HDB-DOS to address two different devices.

I'm thinking of using NITROS9 with a device descriptor set up for source and 
destination HDB-DOS, open each as a raw device, and copying 256 * 35 * 18 
bytes. Do we have a program like Linux's 'dd' ?


Jim, maybe I'm confused about your goal, but Cloud-9 has a BASIC backup 
command on their HDB-DOS disk to do this.  It does take quite awhile, maybe 
3-4 hours for 256 drives if I recall correctly.  It backs up from SCSI 0 to 
SCSI 1, for example.  I wrote an assembly version that does the same thing, 
and is quite a bit faster (like the difference between snails and turtles!). 
With my assembly version, you have no real choices, but can only backup all 
256 drives from one SCSI drive to the other.  Maybe you can get this BASIC 
backup program from Mark or Boisy.  If it works for you, and you want a full 
backup, I can send you my faster assembly version.

-Steve-