[Coco] Vcc+DW4 to access real floppy drive on Coco-3 ?

Aaron Wolfe aawolfe at gmail.com
Mon Jul 7 21:05:22 EDT 2014


One thing, now that I think about it there is no need to involve DW with
the VCC/creation part.  You could, but you can also just use the regular
(emulated ) FDC in VCC.  The disk files vcc uses and creates natively can
be mounted in DriveWire later anyway.  Probably faster.

Im also not sure what the command to do a sector by sector copy is in OS9.
I recall the question coming up before and I think there is one, maybe
someone else knows that part.  There is a standalone utility for doing DECB
disk copies from DW to real floppy, but os9 shouldn't need anything
special, any generic sector copy tool would work.
 On Jul 7, 2014 8:57 PM, "Kandur" <k at qdv.pw> wrote:

> Monday, July 7, 2014, 4:53:34 PM, you wrote:
> > Im fairly sure you cannot access disk drives in one coco from another
> coco,
> > however it seems you could create the disk using the emulator but do the
> > copying to physical disk part using your physical coco.  DriveWire will
> > talk to both, so create in VCC, copy to DW disk, mount that DW disk on
> real
> > coco, copy to real disk.  No need for the disk creation and disk writing
> to
> > be the same coco.
>
> This part sounds simple, will try it right away, thanks.
>
> > Easy than any of that would probably be to just build the disk you want
> > from the NitrOS9 source.  That's how I churn out various configurations,
> at
> > least.  Tweak a makefile and LWTools and the toolshed spit out whatever
> > disk you want a few seconds later (in .dsk form, still need to mount in
> DW
> > and use real coco to write to real disk if a real disk is desired).
> > On Jul 7, 2014 7:44 PM, "Kandur" <k at qdv.pw> wrote:
>
> The LWTools is way over my 'young' head. :)
>
> >> Thank you Aaron, Gene and Bill.
>
> >> Aaron, you wrote:
> >> "Maybe you could describe what the goal is, I'm sure someone knows how
> to
> >> accomplish the end results if they are possible."
> >> My PC is new, it has no FD controller, hence no FD drives, but lots of
> ram.
> >> My original, 128k Coco-3 has 2 physical floppy drives connected to it,
> >> with HDB-DOS in a FD controller,
> >> The goal is to make a real boot floppy for the coco, that leaves
> >> more free ram, then the repo .dsk images do (about 24k).
> >> This can be achieved by editing the bootlist, leaving out the graphic,
> >> sound, joystick, etc. modules, making the Term to default to the Coco's
> >> bitbanger serial port, configured to 9600 baud, xon/xoff with a shell.
>
> >> "You can access both DriveWire drives and real floppy drives on the
> *same*
> >> coco, whether real or emulated, and whether in BASIC or OS9, so it would
> >> seem there is little reason to need access to one coco's drive from
> >> another."
> >> Well, there is a good reason. The virtual Coco (Vcc) has lots of ram,
> >> one could easily edit the bootlist, os9gen and cobbler a new boot image
> >> on it. On the real Coco with 24k of free ram it is impossible to say the
> >> least.
> >> I'd like to make the above described lean, bootfloppy image on the
> virtual
> >> Coco, and write it on a boot floppy with my floppy drive, connected to
> the
> >> real coco.
>
> >> Kandur
>
> >> Monday, July 7, 2014, 8:59:29 AM, you wrote:
> >> > Bill, what I wanted was, to access physical floppy drives on the Coco,
> >> > while running Nitro OS-9 on VCC. Drive ON/OFF don't seem to work
> >> > on the Coco's physical drives from OS-9.
>
> >> > Kandur
>
> >> > Monday, July 7, 2014, 8:45:54 AM, you wrote:
>
> >> >> Kandur, if you are referring to the DRIVEON DRIVEOFF commands, these
> are
> >> >> exclusive to HDBDOS, so if the emulator is running HDBDOS and the
> >> emulator
> >> >> supports real floppies, then yes. Or in the case there's "emulated"
> >> floppies, then it will turn those off/on.
> >> >> When "on" the HDBDOS/RGBDOS RSDOS drives 0-3 on a 255 disk
> partitioned
> >> VHD
> >> >> are "on". When "off" then drives 0-3 will read/write to the
> >> real/emulated system (emulator) floppies.
> >> >>
>
> >> >> Bill Pierce
> >> >> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
> >> >>
>
> >> >> 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: Kandur <k at qdv.pw>
> >> >> To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> >> >> Sent: Mon, Jul 7, 2014 11:34 am
> >> >> Subject: [Coco] Vcc+DW4 to access real floppy drive on Coco-3 ?
>
>
> >> >> Needed when the PC has no floppy drives.
> >> >> Any other Coco emulator can do that?
>
> >> >> Kandur
>
> >> >> --
> >> >> Coco mailing list
> >> >> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> >> >> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
> >> >>
>
> >> --
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>
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