[Coco] Creating DSK images via Drivewire and HDB-DOS question

[Robert Gault]

Nick Marentes wrote:
> Setup the good 'ol CoCo today and find myself unable to remember how to
> use DriveWire to create a DSK image.
>
> I have DriveWire 3 Server running and I have HDB-DOS 1.1 in ROM on my CoCo.
>
> What I am trying to work out is how to take a standard "Real" CoCo3 disk
> and create a DSK image of it on my PC.
>
> I know that I have to do a DRIVE OFF 0 in order to read from my physical
> CoCo Disk (Drive 0) then use the BACKUP 0 TO 1 to transfer the file to
> the DSK file.

That is almost but not quite correct. The sequence using just DW3 and a Coco 
should be:
DRIVE OFF 0
BACKUP 0 TO 1
DRIVE ON
BACKUP 1 TO 0

Now you have a disk that is twice as large as needed. You can mount it in other 
emulators such as MESS or VCC and it can be used as is.
If you want a normal sized disk, you can use a PC raw file editor to cut off the 
second half of the disk or you can use MESS or VCC to BACKUP this double sized 
.dsk image to a normal sized disk.

This procedure will involve a good bit of extra work but use of a RAM disk can 
shorten it slightly. If you use a RAM disk that co-opts drive#3, you can use the 
following sequence:
DRIVE OFF
BACKUP 0 TO 3
DRIVE ON
BACKUP 3 TO 0
The resulting disk will be a normal sized disk.

I have available such a RAMdisk program.

For the long haul, it would be better to shift real Coco disks to a full DW3 
256-drive disk first and then shift these drives to 35-track disk images. That 
would also save duplication of effort.