[Coco] Double sided disk usage with the Vavasour or Collyer Coco3 emulators?

[Tveo Loatouse]

Robert Gault <robert.gault at ...> writes:
> 
> Is there anyone on the list who is familiar with the emulators
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at ...
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> 
> 

To use double sided disks with Jeff Vavasour Coco3 v1.6 or the John Collyer
Coco3 emulators, you must follow these rules:

Booting disks traditional method:

Using the double sided 40 track or 80 track disk images made with RETRIEVE,
EMULATOR, or some other method. Note* The emulator uses drive 0 and drive 2
together to simulate a double sided disk drive. It can be either 35 track
single sided disk drive, 40 track double/single sided disk drive, or
80 track double/single sided disk drive.

  	1. insert boot_disk_0 into the emulated disk drive 0
	2. insert boot_disk_2 into the emulated disk drive 2.

Now you can type DOS from BASIC and boot into the double sided disk image
located in drives 0 and 2. This is the traditional method for booting the
emulator.

Here is how you can make boot disks from the CoCo OS-9 Source Project work
with the coco3 emulator for the traditional method:

	Step 1:
	1. Insert a blank 5.25" DD floppy in to your drive (we assume A:)
	2. Type the following command, replacing the name of the image:

	DSKINI /T40 /D A: <diskimagefile>
	Where <diskimagefile> is the image file you want to transfer to the
	floppy disk. The image file transfer should start. When it is done,
	take out the disk and try booting your CoCo with it.

	Repeat steps 2-3 for each additional disk.

	Step 2:

	1. With the double sided diskette you just made above:
	2. Type the following command:

	RETRIEVE /T40 A: SIDE0.DSK
	RETRIEVE /2 /T40 A: SIDE2.DSK

	3. Start the emulator and [F2] Virtual Disk Menu.

	Then, select the CoCo drive number 0 for SIDE0.DSK
	Then, select the CoCo drive number 2 for SIDE2.DSK

Type DOS and NitrOS-9 Level Two or OS-9 Level 2 should boot up and you'll
be in greeted by either NitrOS-9 Level Two or OS-9 Level 2.

Make a new boot disk,  I recommend that you create a new boot disk
specifically tailored toward the emulator using the vhd hard
drives, clock, and your desired virtual disk drive types;
35, 40, or 80 Track - Single or Double sided virtual disk drives.

You have four such virtual disk drives that can be one of the above
type drives.

 Explaination of Step 1:

In step 1 the blank floppy can be 5.25 or 3.5 720K DD (assume its good)

In step 2 I am formating 40 track double sided disk in the a: drive and
          then I am copy the contents of the diskimagefile to the newly
	  formated disk in drive a:

 Explaination of Step 2:

	In step 1
        I use the disk i made in drive a:

	In step 2
        I retrieve a 40 track side 0 of a dd disk in the drive a:
        The copy it into SIDE0.DSK virtual disk image. Then I
        retrieve a 40 track side 1 (The back side) of a dd disk
        in the drive a: Then copy it into SIDE2.DSK virtual disk image.

	This gives me the two sides needed for using the traditional
        method of using dd type (double sided) disk drives with the
        emulator. Now you have several methods to get and put real
        coco disks. However the method of using real disks and
        accessing the hardware requires that you boot into a
        traditional version of MS-DOS. Note* there is a makeboot disk
        that will boot into MS-DOS 6.2 and allow you to run from a ram
        disk. This gives you access to the floppy disk drives. There
        is enough room to hold serveral virtual disks images. Import
        the virtual disk images into the ram disk and dskini them to
        a real coco disk. To export from coco disk use retrieve
        the disk images to the ram disk and then copy to blank 1.44 Meg
        disks.

Tvefoo