[Coco] Re: Help with ms-dos DSKINI please

[Robert Gault]

Rodney V Hamilton wrote:

> In article <cdhsgf$cph$1 at sea.gmane.org>, robert.gault at worldnet.att.net says...
> 
>>Robert Gault wrote:
>>
>>><snip> The main problem is why won't DSKINI.EXE convert this image to a 
>>>real floppy. I don't have the answer for that.
>>
>>I have tried several methods for making a real disk of this image with 
>>no success. The direct method with "dskini /t40 /d a: lsl.dsk" fails at 
>>track 11. A copy of the disk made with an emulator fails in the same 
>>manner. OS9.EXE a: -w lsl.dsk will not work either.
> 
> 
> Robert,
> The OS9.EXE util worked fine for me, using the same lsl.dsk image that
> DSKINI.EXE cannot handle.  I pre-formatted the target disk on my CoCo3
> before writing the lsl image to avoid possible problems, since I don't
> think OS9.EXE auto-pads its disk writes.  Either way, OS9.EXE gave me
> no problems while writing the image file to floppy. (on a 386 AT box
> running MS-DOS 6.2 to a 1.2M drive with "os9 b: -w lsl.dsk")
> 
> I was actually a bit surprised (and pleased) that OS9.EXE handled the
> double-sided image_file -to- floppy disk write properly, since I had
> mostly been making my floppies with dskini before now.
> 
> 
> 
>>It makes no sense that a program like dskini.exe, which works perfectly 
>>for all other images I've tried, would fail on any specific image. My 
>>guess is that some combination of data bytes is being interpreted by 
>>dskini as a specific dskini instruction. Clearly this should be 
>>impossible but I can't think of any other possibility.
> 
> 
> Definitely a head scratcher!
> BTW, I did notice a buglet in DSKINI.EXE's format-length padding code:
> It only auto-pads 40-track disks!  The padding test it uses compares
> the track number to 40 instead of the user-specified value, so it only
> pads for files with 40 or fewer tracks of data.  FYI.
> 
> -Rodney
> 
> 
> 

It is possible that all of these PC<>Coco programs are sensitive to the 
PC OS that is in use. All were written before our current systems 
existed and therefore may only work perfectly on Win95 or earlier units.

The latest DSKINI.EXE by John Collyer is not that old but still ....