[Coco] CUPS and DSK files

[Joel Ewy]

Bill wrote:
> Having been away from the CoCo world for many years now, I am unable to
> figure out what to do with DSK and CUPS files I find. They are supposed to
> be disk images, I understand, but how do I restore them to disk or tape
> (whichever is appropriate)?
>
>   
Hey Bill,

We ought to put up an up to date FAQ on this stuff I guess.  The DSK
files are indeed disk image files.  I think the CUPS files you mention
are actually CUTS files, which I believe are text-encoded individual
binary files, used to send files over email or UUCP.  I don't think they
are used much these days, but I believe there's a fairly big collection
of them floating around, perhaps from the Princeton mail list.  If
you're using DECB, look for a file named CUTS.BAS, and for OS-9 I see
CUTS.BASIC09.

Most of the CoCo emulators come with a utility to write floppy disk
images onto real disks and to read and write individual files from the
host filesystem to the disk image file.  The classic ones come
originally from Jeff Vavasour's CoCo emulators:  port.exe and
dskini.exe.  The former moves files on and off of image files, and the
latter writes image files to disk.  Unfortunately, dskini.exe only works
in DOS or Win9x, not Windows NT-based operating systems, such as Windows
2000, XP, or Vista, because these operating systems don't allow programs
to directly access the floppy disk controller.  There is a driver called
Fdrawcmd.sys that makes the FDC details available to application
programs.  dskini.exe doesn't know how to use it, but there are various
programs, such as CoCoDisk ( http://coco3.com/users/DarrenA/ ) that do.

For Linux and MacOS, there is the Toolshed suite.  (
http://www.nitros9.org/tools.html )

As for the physical media, you will either need a 360K drive on your PC,
or do what I do and put 3.5" drives on your CoCo.  If your aim is just
to have disk drives on your CoCo and get existing disk images onto them,
the latter may be much easier, given that 360K drives are becoming a
little harder to find these days.  But if you want to read old 5.25"
CoCo disks onto your PC, you'll need a 5.25" drive on the PC.  You might
be able to use a 1.2M high density 5.25" drive for reading CoCo disks,
but it will have to double-step.  Writing low density disks on such a
drive is problematic at best.

You can also serve disk images to your CoCo using Cloud-9's Drivewire or
Roger Taylor's upcoming CoCoNet over a serial cable.

Finally, if you really have no money to spend on these commercial
programs, you could get some programs over to your CoCo by extracting
individual files from disk images using an appropriate utility on your
PC, use a program to convert the binary to a .WAV cassette file (Perhaps
you can do this from one of the emulators) and play the .WAV file
through the PC's sound card into the CoCo via a cassette cable.

Hope that gives you an idea what to look for.

JCE
> Thanks
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