[Coco] Is this possible?

[William Astle]

On 2011-03-15 12:51, Jeremy Michea wrote:
> I was wondering if I could do this – I load a program, say a game from a virtual disk onto my coco via drivewire. Now I don’t have a disk drive but could I save that program on cassette using CSAVEM?

I am assuming you are talking about binary (machine code) files. For
basic programs, you can just CSAVE the program.

The answer is a qualified yes.

It will only work if the program loads into a single contiguous block of
memory and doesn't overwrite anything in DECB.

You will have to know where the program loads in memory and what its
execution address is. Once you discover all of that, there's no reason
you can't CSAVEM the file.

However, there are a lot of binary programs that are not in a single
blob. The binary format used by LOADM (and CLOADM starting with ECB)
allows "multi-origin" files which contain segments which can load at all
different places in memory coming from a single file. There is no way to
instruct CSAVEM (or SAVEM for that matter) how to save such a file.

There are even some "BIN" files that do even more funky things like
overwriting DECBs vector tables or other things in order to autostart or
do other fancy things. Some are even basic programs in disguise or basic
programs packaged with machine code routines. All sorts of bizarre
combinations exist.

All that said, it is possible to copy the file from a "Disk" to tape
regardless of its structure. It will, however, require a special
program, which I'm sure folks around here can direct you to.