[Coco] Another drive question

[John E. Malmberg]

Roger Taylor wrote:
> At 11:07 PM 12/5/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> |The newer Microsoft Operating systems do not have a documented method 
> of reading 256 byte sector media, and the old APIs do not work |on 
> Windows 2000, or Windows XP.
> 
> Then someone needs to beat these guys to a pulp until they talk, because 
> apparently, there is a way.
> http://home.t-online.de/home/dtr-kiel/os9max.htm

They document their method, they have replaced the floppy device driver 
with one of their own.  Which is a method that I have mentioned.
> 
> As soon as I find a reference on the net (and I've been looking hard, 
> trust me), I will be one of the first to write a utility for 
> reading/writing CoCo floppy disks from within Windows 2000 or XP.

You need to write Windows 2000/XP device driver(s), and provide a 
special function to set the floppy parameters.

You might find it easier to write a COCO program that copies a COCO 256 
byte sector floppy to one that is 512 byte sectored, and then any host 
system with a floppy can read it with an application program instead of 
just limiting it to PCs.

It would also allow it to work with PCs that have USB floppy drives, 
where you would need a different custom device driver.

I have the same issue with OpenVMS, the floppy device driver does not 
have an API where I can set the sector size.  But if the COCO could 
produce a 512 byte sectored floppy, I could read it on any of my systems.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only