[Coco] DSK image utilities?

[David Ladd]

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 11:54 AM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Apr 2, 2013, at 11:39 AM, David Ladd <drencor at gamepixel.net> wrote:
> > So far most of my disk images I am creating using some of the tools from
> > the ToolShed Project.
>
> I looked at that, but didn't get very far. I kept getting errors from the
> tool, so I have some learning to do.
>
Well the command line structure for some is the easiest to get.
For example to use decb to copy a file to the disk image you would:
decb copy file diskimage,

You must in almost all cases make sure you have a "," after the diskimage
file name. If you don't it will treat the file as a normal file rather than
a disk image.


>
> > Other tools to read or write images from/to real floppies I am using
> > CoCoDisk & fdrawcmd.sys driver.
>
> What is CoCoDisk?
>

CoCoDisk is a windows based program to read and write disk images using the
fdrawcmd.sys driver.

>
> > You can also under linux use dd to create disk images.
>
> I mean, if I have a .BAS file or a .BIN, and I want to get it in to an
> emulator, how would I go about doing that? Xroar can create a blank disk
> image on the fly, but I do not know how to put files on the image. It seems
> back in the days of the Jeff V CoCo emulators (DOS!) we had tools that did
> this.
>

Well the old DSKINI and DSKREAD utilities from Jeff Vavasour do not work in
modern windows platforms.  Thats where the CoCoDisk utility comes in handy.
 As far as the other utility that came with Jeff Vavasours emulator to
transfer files into and out of disk images may still work, I haven't tried.

I use the decb utility from the toolshed project to read and write files
from/to the disk images on the native system I am using.  There is portable
source for the utilities on sourceforge so they can be built on windows and
linux/*nix systems.

So far I have been able to use decb, cecb, and os9 on my own windows
system, my ubuntu 10.04 linux system, mint 14 linux syste, and my debian
Raspberry Pi system without any problems.

Plus this is how the NitrOS-9 project disk images are created using the os9
utility that comes in the toolshed project.  Plus I have a few of my own
projects that I use decb and cecb from the toolshed project.

>
> Is someone working on this? If not, it would be nice to have some portable
> version -- maybe straight ANSI-C code that could compile on anything. Java
> is also an option, since we rely on it for DriveWire, but with Java getting
> booted off the desktop for security concerns, I wonder if it's a long term
> solution.
>

Well as far as portable goes all the systems I have that I have tried to
build toolshed on has built fine.  Recently a couple bugs were found and I
believe we got those fixed.  So far though I have had no problems with the
toolshed tools since I figured out what needed to be used for the command
line options.

>
> Oh. I think I need to dust off my EthaGUI stuff and update my Towel disk
> utility so it can run on modern machines and deal with .DSK files :-)
>

Actually I think I still have the MM/1 copy that I bought from you at one
of the fests back in the 90's.

>
>                 -- Allen
>
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