[Coco] Formatting DriveWire virtual disks and floppies.

[Walter]

Gettlemen (& any ladies).
I have done it.
The secret to formatting a DW floppy/disk is in an undocumented option to format.
You can provide the number of tracks (of 18 sectors) with the 'value option like so:
Format /x1 '84
Will format a 1512 sector drive or 42tracks*2sides*18sectors.  But you must provide DW a 387072 byte file to mount.
I successfully backed up my first 42track DS floppy to a DW virtual floppy!
Walter

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Walter
Sent: Monday, 14 January 2019 7:21 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: [Coco] Formatting DriveWire virtual disks and floppies.

Ok so I tried to format a blank 360K floppy on /x1 using Nitros9

 

If I give all the options like so:

 

Format /x1 2 "Test" `40`

 

It complains the device is not supported.

 

If I just do:

 

Format /x1

 

It displays some info that the disk is 18432 sectors long is a hard drive
and do I really want to proceed.

 

In fact it doesn't matter what size blank virtual floppy I mount in
DriveWire (165k, 320K, 360K) it always reports this number of sectors.

 

If I proceed it succeeds. Not sure how when the floppy only has 1440
sectors.

 

I can then perform a free and it succeeds.

 

The Nitros-9 manual indicates the format commands has no options!

 

Any ideas how I might format a 1512 sector (42 track ds) DW floppy?

 

Walter


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