[Coco] Formatting L.R. Tech Hard Drive in OS9 Level II

[Barry Nelson]

I would suggest mounting a drive wire bootable disk such as http://sourceforge.net/projects/nitros9/files/releases/v3.3.0/disks/nos96809l2v030300coco3_dw.dsk in drive /X0, drive 0 on your DriveWire server. Mount the NitrOS9 disk you want to copy to an actual floppy in /X1, drive 1 on your DriveWire server. Load this cassette wav file if you do not have HDBDOS in rom so you can boot straight from DriveWire: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8RnV5G0TZFZalV5T0IyUjFLOUk/view?usp=sharing
If you have HDBDOS in rom, you can skip straight to the DOS command below, otherwise type:
CLOADM
And play the wav file to your CoCo 3's cassette input.
When it is loaded, type:
EXEC
Then when the HDBDOS screen appears, type:
DOS
NitrOS9 should start to boot. Once NitrOS9 is loaded from DriveWire, type:
Assuming the disk you are copying to floppy is 40 track double sided, type:
dmode /d0 sid=2 cyl=28 dns=0 typ=20 sct=12 t0s=12
format /d0
backup /x1 /d0 #40k

You should now have a copy of the disk that is in DriveWire drive 1 to physical drive 0, if it was a bootable disk, the copy should be bootable as well. If you do not have HDBDOS in rom, you may want to download HDBDW4.DSK from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8RnV5G0TZFZcEVac0dtWUxVU1E/view?usp=sharing
Copy that to a 35 track Disk Extended Basic floppy. That way next time you want to boot from DriveWire you can LOADM"HDBDW4C3.BIN" from floppy instead of loading HDBDOS from cassette.

> Mark J. Blair nf6x at nf6x.net 
> Mon Jan 11 23:26:50 EST 2016
> 
> > On Jan 11, 2016, at 20:15, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
> > 
> > I haven't managed to get Nitros9 onto real disks yet. I tried using DriveWire 3 Server on my Mac and WIRED (which I've successfully used before) to transfer disk images to my CoCo 3's floppy drive, but this results in disks that won't boot and aren't readable under OS9 Level II. Is DW3+WIRED just for DECB disks? I know I've used it before successfully, but I don't recall whether I used it for OS9/Nitros9 disks.
> 
> It just occurred to me that this may just be a 35 vs. 40 track issue. The disk images I am trying to transfer have 40 tracks, and I bet WIRED is just transferring 35 of them.
> 
> -- 
> Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
> http://www.nf6x.net/