[Coco] hybrid CoCo-CP/M disk

[Darren A.]

>From: Robert Gault:
>
>... At least one Coco software package uses the entire track 17. RGB-DOS
>used the last sector of T17 for a disk label. I think some software may
>have stored a copy of the FAT or perhaps the entire directory in the
>latter half of T17.
>
-
This is a good point. If you wish to be compatible with third-party versions 
of Disk Basic, then you should probably exclude CP/M from touching any part 
of track 17. You *may* also need to be concerned about marking tracks 35-39 
as alllocated, since most third-party versions support 40 tracks. However, I 
would imagine that they must put some information somewhere on Track 17 to 
indicate if the disk is not a standard 35 track Shack format.

Of course, with a third-party Basic that supports double-sided 40 track 
disks, you could make a hybrid disk with most of side 0 (except track 17) 
devoted to CP/M, and side 1 available for Disk Basic!

By the way, I wrote a Disk Basic program that will format a specific range 
of tracks. This could be used after the CP/M formatting to restore the 
proper interleave to the CoCo tracks. Let me know if you're interested 
(off-list).

Darren

_________________________________________________________________
Get FREE Web site and company branded e-mail from Microsoft Office Live 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/mcrssaub0050001411mrt/direct/01/