[Coco] Disk Basic and 512 byte block floppies. (Gene Heskett)

Frank Swygert farna at att.net
Mon Jan 19 12:18:42 EST 2004


Gene, sounds like you could use a cheap 386/486 laptop to solve your 
problem, even an old Tandy 1400HD would do the trick!

Hmmm.... a PC on a card like the first Mac "PC emulators" would be nice 
for things like this, just use Windows as a terminal. Talk about the 
"ultimate downgrade"!! You'd have to at least have a floppy controller 
and drive connected to the board for it to do CoCo users any good 
though, wouldn't you? Or anyone needing to read old or unusual format 
discs?

>>When you say you have to reboot down to DOS for
>>reading a floppy image I become confused.  Are you saying the
>>Command Line window in 2000 Pro is not putting you back into DOS? 
> 
> 
> Thats correct.  That looks like a dos shell, but its still in 
> protected mode, and cannot directly access the hardware.  Thats been 
> a major bone of contention with me in using some of the tools to tune 
> up our DVC-PRO tape machines.  I find I must reboot, and catch it at 
> the boot prompt, making it run a dos from there before I have any 
> access to the $1500 data collection card in the machine.
> 
> But, the point is when you try from a dos shell, windows never tells 
> you that the operation was denied, and the driver software doesn't 
> tell you it can't see the card, it just reports a constant stream of 
> data errors.
> 
> Squawking at the card vendor or the software supplier does no good, 
> they presume you have an old dos-3.2 machine at your disposal just 
> for this.  In the real world there isn't even room for the winderz 
> box on the bench let alone an old dos box too.  Arrogant B*ds.
> 
> 
>>This is an important distinction for me since I run Mac OS 9.1 with
>>no command line capability and VirtualPC is my only link to what
>>most of you are discussing.  I also plan to use it, if feasable,
>>for burning CD's that will run on Mark's/Boisy's Super SCSI CoCo
>>CD.
>>
>>Thanks,     Griz
> 
> 

-- 
Frank Swygert -- Gulfport, MS
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