[Coco] problem transferring DSK files to disk

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Vern Burke may have mentioned these words:
>Greetings all:

Howdy.

>[snip]   I know the drives and the media are OK, since they'll format 
>under DOS.

Not to sound like a BOFH, but that's rather like saying that you know the 
transmission works because you can start the engine.

Before you format the media again, type this DOS 6.x command:

VERIFY ON

Unlike OS-9, VERIFY in DOS is *off* by default - those disks could be 
loaded with errors, but you'll never know it unless you issue a CHKDSK 
command or make sure that VERIFY is on first - the format will take twice 
as long, but at least you'll know if it actually wrote what it was supposed to.

>    Any attempt to use a 720 drive results in various write errors (I've 
> tried 4 different drives). Any attempt to use a 1.44 (with DSDD media) 
> drive appears to complete properly but fails to boot on the CC3 (drops 
> back to OK after giving the DOS command).

What type of hardware are you using (Mobo/Controller/Floppy Drive 
Nomenclature) and if the floppy drives have jumpers, anything special?

Also, if you're just booting from a DOS floppy, you might want to boot from 
a Linux floppy instead - the 'fdformat' command has a lot more flexibility 
to it WRT sector counts/sizes/etc. than the DOS 'format' command. I *think* 
I read somewhere that with the correct switches, you can low-level format a 
CoCo floppy (35/40/80 track, 18 sector, 256 bytes/sector) right from Linux.

That said, I've not done much at all for many years for xferring disks 
to/from CoCos, so all I've said may be pure guano. ;-)

HTH,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch at 30below.com

What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????