[Coco] Re: Disk Basic and 512 byte block floppies.

[John E. Malmberg]

Torsten Dittel wrote:
> Hi John,
> I wonder if you ever tried that one. There are so called "3-mode" FD
> drivers around (only in Japan) which could help accessing other formats
> (don't know if this really works for a 256 Bytes/sector CoCo-Disk). I
> found the following instructions to install one:
[snip]

I am not considering using third party device drivers with Microsoft 
Windows.

For one thing, as soon as I get some new features added to the MS-DOS 
version of the program that runs in a Windows 9x command window, I will 
probably stop working on that.

Then I will work on a Windows Console mode version that uses 512 byte 
sector floppies, and will also run it on OpenVMS, and probably LINUX if 
I can get motivated to load up a system.

The signals are clear that it needs to be the COCO that needs to read 
and write the PC 720K format disks, even if it uses the COCO file system.

I could go through the trouble to create an XP driver, and have it break 
with the next service pack or next Microsoft release.

Or we can write one COCO program that allows Windows/OpenVMS/LINUX to 
read interchange media.

The other reason for this is that when I get the SuperIDE and the 
SuperBoard that are on order, I will be using CompactFlash cards in 
them, and I can read and write those cards on both Microsoft Windows, 
and OpenVMS by just modifying the program slightly that I am working on now.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only