[Coco] drive motors

Robert Hermanek rhermanek at centurytel.net
Sun Jul 14 18:20:29 EDT 2013


Found my problem.  Went through all the shelves, found 4 different 
floppy drives to test, found one that works, the others do not. Possible 
that newer floppy drives no longer properly support DD write?  Who 
knows.  Very happy it works now, and thanks for all the advice.

Another note, found this utility,:

http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/fdio/

Downloaded the zip toward bottom of page, installed it on xp, and was 
able to format (in theory) from PC however I like.  For example for coco 
I used command

fdio -format -g 35,2,18,256 -i 3

which I think corresponds to:

35 tracks
2 heads (double sided)
18 sectors
256 bytes per sector
interleave=3

Don't know much about it other than the arbitrary format option using -g 
seems pretty cool.  Did double sided to be safe, didn't have to...

-RobertH

On 7/14/2013 3:21 PM, Bill Pierce wrote:
> Robert,
> I think he was assuming you were meaning the disk was already formatted before using DSKINI, but yes, DSKINI will format the disks fine. They will just be formatted as 35trk SSDD disks. Unless you have something like ADOS or ADOS3, or are using OS-9, RSDOS will format ALL drives as 35trk SSDD no matter what kind of drive it is.
>
> Bill Pierce
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Hermanek <rhermanek at centurytel.net>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Sun, Jul 14, 2013 3:25 pm
> Subject: Re: [Coco] drive motors
>
>
> Oh, that must be it then -- I've been assuming that a healthy DD disk
> would suffice, and that DSKINI could format it, after all it can with
> blank 5-1/4" media.  I don't have VCC set up, never got the hang of it.
> Is there a PC utility for accomplishing the format?  I was simply
> verifying my DD disks by using command:
>
> FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9
>
> to specify a 720k format...
>
> -RobertH
>
> On 7/13/2013 9:36 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
>> You will still need to format the disks. Depending on your Coco
>> system, you could have problems formatting the disks.
>> You can, with VCC, format the disks, either OS-9 or Disk Basic, on a
>> PC for Coco use. Once that is done you can reformat as needed on a
>> Coco system.
>>
>
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