[Coco] Need to replace deteriorated original disks

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> I've been busily using Cloud9's excellent Drivewire software with HDBDOS to
> backup my old CoCo development disks.
>

I'll be working on the DW4 GUI including a "wizard" for transferring
disks to .dsks and vice versa over the holidays.
Since you've been doing this recently, I wondered if you could let me
know what you think the best approach would be.   If anybody else has
thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

My basic idea is to have the program walk you through the process.
You choose "copy a floppy to dsk" and it prompts you for a destination
file name, displays the commands to type on the coco, and you're done.
  It seems likely that for transfers from flopppy to disk, people
would want to do several disks in a row, so I was thinking a button to
"do it again".   going .dsk to floppy, probably not a batch as much as
single disks?

DW4 can map any HDBDOS "drive" to a single file, so it would be
possible to do BACKUP 0 to 1, BACKUP 0 TO 2, etc on the coco for each
disk..  the wizard could sort those into files in a directory, or
could prompt you for filenames for each, or could just do one at a
time using the same drive #, not sure if manually incrementing the
disk # on the coco side might be error prone for the user.

anyway, the goal is to make archiving a floppy disk collection into
.dsks as simple and fast as possible.  any ideas are welcome.

-Aaron


> Luckily all my software development disks have survived the ravages of time,
> no data lost. The created DSK image files can now be stored on my PC hard
> drive (and accessed via Drivewire) and CD-ROM backups made to ensure I don't
> lose all those fun years of programming on the CoCo.
>
> I've also begun backing up my commercial original disks and have found some
> that have not lasted the test of time.
>
> My copy of Oblique Triad's "Studio Works" has now failed. This is the
> program I used to sample the sound effects used in many of my CoCo games.
>
> Also, the best version of Zaxxon ever created for the CoCo, "Z'89" has also
> bit-the-dust.
>
> These disks are originals that I purchased in the late 80's.
>
> Does anyone have copies of these 2 disks they can send me as a DSK image
> please?
>
> Z'89 may be tricky in that it is a copy protected disk.
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated. Hopefully, I won't find too many more
> disks that have deteriorated over time.
>
> Nick Marentes
>
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