[Coco] Virtual disk file formats

[Tormod Volden]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:48 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
> You can now access all the 256 Basic drives but will not have access to the
> OS-9 portion of the .vhd as it is filled with $00. So you will need to use a
> distribution disk that can access an emu type drives so you can format the
> OS-9 portion of the .vhd disk.
> You will need the eumdsk driver and descriptor to access the .vhd from VCC
> or MESS. Format the .vhd which will be /H0, and fill the CMDS directory with
> the current commands.

Just an innocent question, why is an emudsk (emulator disk?) driver
needed? Doesn't the emulator emulate normal disks? Or is it just a way
of "cheating" because normal disk drives are so complex to emulate and
we don't really care enough?

Also why this seemingly complex and confusing topic of combining an
HDBDOS portion and NitrOS-9 portion on one disk image. I understand
when having one real hard drive used for everything. But for emulators
or DriveWire, isn't it easier to use several disks? For instance when
using DriveWire I have a NitrOS-9 disk image in slot 0 and a HDBDOS
image in slot 1.

Regards,
Tormod