[Coco] Looking for original floppy disks of FHL FLEX for CoCo

[Steve Ostrom]

Michael, I think I had an original disk of Color Flex 5.0 by Frank Hogg Labs.  I sold my entire CoCo collection to Brian Wieseler a few years ago.  Brian, this disk is stored in box S15, with original documentation.  Please check to see if my records are correct.

--- Steve ---


Sent from Mail for Windows

From: Michael R. Furman via Coco
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2023 12:25 PM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Cc: Michael R. Furman
Subject: [Coco] Looking for original floppy disks of FHL FLEX for CoCo

In 1982 Frang Hogg Labs released FLEX 5.0 For the Color Computer. They were not quiet about this at the time. They ran ads in 68 Micro Journal and The Rainbow which were quite boastful about how powerful FLEX was compared to OS-9.

While there are functional disk images of this around, they are all backups of the original master disks. So far I have not been able to locate an image of an original master disk. If anyone happens to have original master disks it would be helpful to properly archive them. The best would be a full flux image from something like KryoFlux/GreaseWeazle/CatWeazle etc. A second choice acceptable option to archive the disks would be IMD or DMK images. If you don't have any way to archive these I do have a GreaseWeazle so I could make the images then return the original disks back to you. Please note: Due to the way the disks are formatted, it is NOT possible to duplicate them exactly using BACKUP on a CoCo or using any procedure from within FLEX itself.

The disk formatting is a standard FLEX disk:

Single-Sided 5.25" 48-TPI
Track 0: Single Density 10-sectors 256-bytes
Tracks 1-34: Double Densiy 18-sectors 256-bytes

So for GreaseWeazle to archive the disks you'd want to run:

gw read --tracks "c=0-34:h=0" flex_master.scp

Why is this needed?

The original master disks have some extra programs on them which are used to create new backup master disks. These programs are not duplicated on the backup disks, so without them it is not possible to create fresh backup master disks. One program which is needed but missing is called "PUTBOOT.LDR". This program sets up the disk so it can be booted from DECB and is also a FLEX disk. I believe it does this by removing some sectors from the FLEX free chain on the disk to make them available to BASIC. It also places the FLEX.BAS program and the boot code on the disk.

Thanks,
--Mikey

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