[Coco] Re: Cutting WP notch on DSDD disks?

[Robert Emery]

--- Charlie <chazbeenhad at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > If you have DS drives, there's not much need for flippies anymore.
> 
> How so Bob? I mean, for disk basic you still can only use 35 tracks on one
> side of the disk, right?

Not really. There is a program on the oldest FOG distro on my site that patches
BASIC to use 40/72/80 tracks. There are tradeoffs though. I generally don't use
it, especially now that I have a HD.

There are two easy ways to access the 2nd side(s)... a software method and a
hardware method. (CoCo1/2 must be in all RAM mode for the software method to
work)

For software without hard-coded paths, a single poke will allow you to change
one of the drive numbers to the 2nd side of an existing drive (assuming you
have floppy a cable with all pins at all plugs). The most common configuration
is probably 2 DS drives (following POKEs are for DECB 1.1, DECB1.0 uses
different locations)... 
POKE55455,65:POKE55456,66
These tell Basic that DRIVE2 is the back of DRIVE0 and DRIVE3 is the back of
DRIVE1. 5-1/4 or 3-1/2 inch drives, makes no difference.

Color FOG does all this automatically, and even lets you visually change them
around on the fly, very handy for 3 drive setups since you now have up to 6
floppy sides available to Basic, but only 4 drive #s. Each pair of FD buttons
represents the two sides of the drive icon they are under. When you exit FOG,
the drive# mapping stays the way you set it. 

 ---------

Now, for hard-coded games... like Carmen SanDiego for example... (note that
this is an OS-9 game. This method works *regardless of OS*)

On my floppy cable (inside the FD500/502 drive case, using an exacto knife) I
intercepted the Side Select wire (pin 32, third one from the end) before it
gets to the drives. It goes to a 7404 inverter.

Then the normal and inverted Side Select signals go to a SPDT switch (I
actually used the Turbo switch in the repack. In the FD500 case I put a slide
switch in the 3.5" drive adapter bezel.) The switch allows use of either side
of the drive at any time. 
Try not to switch it during disk access! ;-)

 ---------

The tricky part about this is you can't read the back of a flippy by using the
switch (or the POKE for that matter) because it will basically be spinning
backwards. 

To convert (copy) a flippy to a DS floppy, you MUST use the POKE method. For
the following we'll assume we already have a blank, formatted DS disk in the
first drive position (DRIVE0) and an original flippy disk in DRIVE1

1. POKE55455,65 (set DRIVE2 as the back of DRIVE0, a 3.5" in my case)
2. BACKUP 1 TO 0
3. Flip the flippy over
4. BACKUP 1 to 2

Now I'm ready to play and any time it tells me to flip the disk over I just
flip the switch and It's done.

Bob Emery



		
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com