[Coco] os-9

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Robert Gault <robert.gault at att.net> wrote:
> Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>>
>> Ok, then the procedure would be:
>>
>> On DW server, turn HDBDOS Mode on, insert source image in drive #4
>>
>> On coco, insert destination floppy in disk 0 (or 1,2 etc).
>> Type:
>>
>> DRIVE OFF
>> BACKUP 4 to 0
>>
>> wait a while...
>>
>> That's it, if I am remembering correctly.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>>
>
> There's a problem with that procedure and it won't work. There is also the
> question of whether the Tandy floppy in question is single sided or dual
> sided as NitrOS-9 is a large package.
>
> HDBDOS uses DRIVE OFF and DRIVE ON to turn on and off floppies for which
> ever hard drive is active. You can select the hard drive that is active with
> DRIVE#n where n is 1 through 4.
> That means there is no method in the HDBDOS code to copy directly from one
> hard drive to another under Disk Basic. It also prevents copying, for
> example, from hard drive 0 to floppy 0.
>
> The command BACKUP 4 to 0 would make use of the same hard drive not
> different drives on a server. Since the NitrOS-9 disks are floppies not hard
> drives, using BACKUP in this fashion would fail badly.


All of this is true of DriveWire 3.  However, the simple procedure I
listed should work fine in DriveWire 4.  In DW4 it is simple to copy
from normal single disk images in any DW drive to floppies, vice
versa, or between disk images on the server.  You can even mount the
old DW3 style multi disk images, either in full or you can mount
arbitrary individual disks out of the middle of them.  The key is to
turn on HDBDOS mode in the server.

-Aaron