[Coco] FHL Color Flex

Bob Devries devries.bob at gmail.com
Fri Apr 5 22:06:35 EDT 2013


Stephen,

actually OS-9 started life with at least the first track as single-density. 
It was called "Universal format".

Also, Colour computer FLEX used 18 sectors per track on its double-density 
tracks. It was also capable of doing both double-sided and 80 track disks.

Regards, Bob Devries
Dalby, QLD, Australia

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen H. Fischer" <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] FHL Color Flex


> Hi,
>
> Bob, my bad, and I had the manual right in my hand a second before. Print 
> too small for my new eyes.
>
> Darren, OS-9 disks have the density in the .dsk file, but the utilities do 
> not use it AFAIK.
>
> I have been trying to determine if Track 0 single-density has a different 
> number of sectors, so far TSC in their FLEX manuals says 10 and 10 for the 
> double-density tracks.
>
> FLEX is the only OS to do this different track 0 AFAIK.
>
> If that is true, then a .dsk would not be any different if all tracks were 
> double-density including track 0.
>
> But then why are we having problems with "188AA_02.DSK"?
>
> Luis, can you extract: "DRIVE is 0, TRACK is 16, and sector is 9"?
>
> A hex dump cannot be disassembled but someone with experience might be 
> able to read the hex and understand it.
>
> I could do that ~ 1970 for Super Computer PP code.
>
> SHF
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Darren A" <mechacoco at gmail.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 6:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] FHL Color Flex
>
>
>> On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Bob Devries wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have unearthed a disk here of FLEX 3.3. It *does* work on the Coco3; I
>>> booted it, and typed "cat" and got a file listing.
>>>
>>> However... It is as I suspected, track 0 of the disk is not a standard
>>> format (probably single-density); it returns I/O error when I try to 
>>> read
>>> it.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know if it is possible to image such a disk?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Tim Lindner has shown how to patch Basic so that DSKI$ can be used to
>> read single density sectors:
>>
>> <http://tlindner.macmess.org/?page_id=250>
>>
>> This may at least allow you to extract the information from the disk.
>> Making an image using the data would likely be more complicated
>> (maybe needing to edit a DMK file by hand in a hex editor).
>>
>> Next question: Do any of the emulators support single density tracks
>> in a DMK file?
>>
>> Darren
>
>
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