[Coco] Re: dskini.exe problems

[John E. Malmberg]

Boisy Pitre wrote:
> I'm using a Shuttle motherboard running the latest Windows XP.  In a 
> Command Prompt window, any DSKINI command just sits there trying to 
> write the first sector of the virtual disk to drive A: (a 1.44MB 
> floppy).  The BIOS is set up properly, and I can read FAT16 diskettes, 
> so I'm wondering, does DSKINI.EXE have compatibility issues with some of 
> these floppy controllers built into these condensed Super I/O chips?
> 
> I would sure like to get this to work.  Any suggestions would be 
> appreciated.

Boisy,

The hardware can read the COCO formatted floppies just fine.

Microsoft has removed the API for changing the sector size.

It would probably be more usefull to provide a way for COCOs under disk 
basic or OS-9 or FLEX-09 to be able to write to 512 byte sectored media.

If you want to persue a Windows based program, look for the source for 
RAWRITE_WIN.EXE that is used to write LINUX boot floppies on a Microsoft 
  Windows system.

It contains a DLL to directly access the floppy drive.  It may be 
possible to use that information to write a DLL that will allow changing 
the sector size.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only