[Coco] Extracting programs from .dsk to .cas

[Stephen Robinson]

Hi all,

Been a lurker here for a while now, and finally decided to ask a
question which has been on my mind awhile.

I have got a Coco2 & 3 with only a cassette tape for IO. I guess you
could say I came onto the CoCo scene a little late as I got my first
Coco back about 7 years ago. (But hey give me a break, my cocos are
almost a decade older than I am!) I have the emulators running and can
get Coco programs running on it just fine, but that just doesn't
compare to running on an actual jolly ol' CoCo. The trouble is, most
of the software is on virtual disks. I have read through many of the
rainbow magazines I found in a basement and found the PEEKs to get the
addresses of where the programs load from disk into memory. I figured
I could then save them from memory to cassette, but this will not work
for the many programs which automatically start on load. I have also
looked through some command line software for modern PCs, but cannot
find any conversion util. If I could find the proper documentation
(especially on the format of a .dsk), I wouldn't mind giving that a go
myself if it is theoretically possible.

I realize that some programs depend on Disk Basic and having disks to
load from, but is there any way for me to get at least some onto
cassette? I've always wanted to give Phantom Slayer a go on my
physical Coco. :)