[Coco] problem transferring DSK files to disk

Vern Burke vburke at skow.net
Wed Aug 24 18:06:24 EDT 2005


Disk formats perfectly under MSDOS with verify on.

MB is an unmarked Athlon "Classic" (Slot A), floppy drives attempted are 
Chinon FZ-354 (720), Teac FD-35-FN (720), generic 1.44.

No jumpers on the 720's except for the drive selects, 720's jumpered to 
DS1 (using a twisted cable, the generic 1.44 is A).

Vern


Roger Merchberger wrote:
> 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?????????????
> 
> 



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