[Coco] Formatting DriveWire virtual disks and floppies.

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 14 January 2019 06:48:38 Walter wrote:

> 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
>
Format has other options too and I am at a loss as to why they should 
have disappeared from the dox.

But this disk creation is something toolshed can do IIRC, but its been a 
while since I've used it so memory is hazy.

You should have "toolshed" and "lwtools" in your pc arsenal, they might 
explain a lot.

> -----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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Cheers, Gene Heskett
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