[Coco] Archiving a floppy disk collection

[Aaron Wolfe]

That is a very good idea.  Dump them all into a (whatever those 256
disk image files are called) and then extract with toolshed once
transferred.
OS9 disks have labels, but do DECB?  Either way, a script could
actually take a (whatever those 256 disk image files are called) file
as input and spit out HTML with directory listings, volume label, etc
all formatted quite nicely.. or input the data into a database, etc.
Same script could be modified to read all the .dsk in a directory with
a minimal change.

Interesting... I had thought about adding something sort of like that
into DW4.. something in the vein of iTunes but for disks.  Thats why
there is a special web browser built in, I had this vision of a web
site where all the disks were described and you just click to insert
right off the page.  It works great now for viewing sites like Curtis
Boyle's awesome coco games site, but doesn't do anything to help you
browse your own local disks. It actually wouldn't be too hard to add
as I've already added some of the toolshed functionality.

btw, we need a name for (whatever those 256 disk image files are
called).  when writing DW documentation it is always difficult to know
what to call them and I struggle to keep the wording clear even more
than usual. maybe there is a name and I just don't know it.  multi
disk images?


On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
> I agree that the big 255 floppy clusters can be a bit difficult to deal with.
> I'm thinking that toolshed has tools to extract the individual floppies from
> the larger ( hard to call those files large these days! :-) ) and with a bit
> of luck and scripting it'll be possible for the toolshed util to extract the
> disk label and use that to name the file the floppy image will be written to.
>
> With a reasonably modern PC running linux it shouldn't take more then a few
> minutes to extract 251 floppy images from a single file with toolshed. I'm
> sure that others would be interested in the script to automate that process!!
>
> The Other Frank
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 05:11:53PM -0400, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> This would certainly work, and works with DW4 just like DW3 and below
>> so long as you leave hdbdos translation turned off.
>>
>> Personally, I find single disk images much more useful than big
>> multi-disk beasts.  One advantage is simply that each disk then get's
>> its own file name and you can browse through them when choosing what
>> to mount.  Of course that only works if your disks are in files with
>> useful names, and when thinking about copying hundreds of disks maybe
>> naming each file would be too much work.
>>
>> If you did want to make individual .dsk files, you could automate the
>> process to a large degree using the dw command when in OS9.  For
>> instance, a command like:
>>
>> dw disk create 3 /disks/myprogram.dsk
>>
>> will eject any disk in drive 3, create a new blank image at
>> /disks/myprogram.dsk, and insert it in drive 3.  you could then just
>> copy source to disk 3, rinse and repeat.  maybe make a little script
>> to automate further.
>>
>> In DECB, unfortunately we don't have a dw command interface (yet?).
>> However, the GUI does provide exactly the same command set, you just
>> have to type them into the entry box at the bottom of the server side
>> screen instead of doing everything right at the coco.  That might
>> still be a timesaver.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:16 AM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > While I'm sure that Aaron will know of a much better and smarter way to do this but with at
>> > least drivewire 2 & 3 you could have 4 disk groups of 255 floppies each. Subtract the first
>> > four for physical floppies and and that leave 251 for a total of 1004 floppies. Even I could
>> > write a simple basic program to increment a counter to loop from 3-255 and with another
>> > counter going from 0-3 using the "drive #x" command! :-)
>> >
>> > That should keep your fussing on the server side of drivewire to a minimum. I've already done
>> > this on a much smaller scale with 20-30 floppies that I bought at auction at a coco fest a few
>> > years ago.
>> >
>> > The Other Frank
>> >
>> > PS - Don't want to start any wars about legal rights or issues but have you given any thoughts
>> > about making the drivewire images available for download? Assuming that it's legal for you to
>> > do so of course!
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 07:46:11AM -0500, Allen Huffman wrote:
>> >> On Mar 21, 2012, at 7:24 AM, Robert Gault wrote:
>> >> > Allen, could you be more specific about what you want to do? It reads to me that you want to put a disk into the Coco and a blank image into Drivewire. Then backup the Coco disk to the Drivewire mounted disk.
>> >> > If that is correct, you don't need any programs, just Drivewire4. The exception would be for copyright protected disks.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, but I don't want to do that for 1000 floppy disks, so I am going to write a program so all I do is swap a disk, type in what it is (disk label), and hit ENTER, and it cranks away.
>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Allen Huffman - PO Box 22031 - Clive IA 50325 - 515-999-0227 (vmail/TXT only)
>> >> Sent from my MacBook.
>> >>
>> >>
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