[Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives

[Steve Ostrom]

It yours for the taking.  It was just a fun project.  In case anyone asks, 
there is no real source code for the ML program, except for the data 
statements in the accompanying BASIC file.  I hand wrote the program, and 
hand-aseembled it sitting at my picnic table at the cabin.  That was a 
really fun process.  Not many people I know would ever hand-assemble a 
program, including counting back to branch points, etc.  You will see three 
files on the disk.  One is the "source" code BASIC program, in case someone 
really wants to play with it.  The second file is a BASIC loader program 
that initializes the hard drives and loads and executes the ML program.  The 
third file is the ML program itself.  Only the ML program runs once you 
start the process, so the time to copy 256 drives is about 1/2 the time 
needed for a BASIC program.  I thought the ML version would be much faster, 
but most of the sloweness is in the read/write function of the drives.

The program itself is not very fancy.  No nice user-friendly interface, but 
it does its job of copying from SCSI drive 0 to SCSI drive 1.  I even have a 
rough error reporting routine in thr ML, but I've never forced an error to 
see if it would report properly.  There is a running display on monitor, 
showingh the drive and sector numbers as it progresses.  It sems to copy 
both RSBASIC and OS-9 disks without any issues.

-Steve-



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Marlette" <mmarlette at frontiernet.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 10:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives


> Steve,
>
> Most definitely.
>
> You have probably sent it before, with your permission, we would like to 
> include it as part of our distribution.
>
> Thanks!!!!
>
> Mark
> http://www.cloud9tech.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Steve Ostrom" <smostrom7 at comcast.net>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 10:21:54 AM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives
>
> Jim, my Coco system is set up at our family cabin (think unheated -
> Minnesota winter), but I actually was able to make a floppy copy of my
> backup diskette over the weekend. (Coco's are incredible!) If you give me
> your address, I'll mail a copy diskette to you. I don't have any way of
> making it into a .dsk file and sending it by e-mail. I could not find the
> BASIC backup program I remember getting from Boisy, but I'll look for this
> come Spring.
>
> Mark, did you want a floppy copy as well to play with at Cloud-9?
>
> -- Steve -- 
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jim Hickle" <jlhickle at yahoo.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 11:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives
>
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 1/20/12, Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> From: Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Date: Friday, January 20, 2012, 1:30 PM
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Hickle" <jlhickle at yahoo.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 10:59 PM
> Subject: [Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives
>
>
>
>
> I'd like to backup HDB-DOS drives from one device to another. I have SCSI
> drives. Perhaps I could use BACKUP in a loop but don't know if it's 
> possible
> for HDB-DOS to address two different devices.
>
> I'm thinking of using NITROS9 with a device descriptor set up for source 
> and
> destination HDB-DOS, open each as a raw device, and copying 256 * 35 * 18
> bytes. Do we have a program like Linux's 'dd' ?
>
>
> Jim, maybe I'm confused about your goal, but Cloud-9 has a BASIC backup
> command on their HDB-DOS disk to do this. It does take quite awhile, maybe
> 3-4 hours for 256 drives if I recall correctly. It backs up from SCSI 0 to
> SCSI 1, for example. I wrote an assembly version that does the same thing,
> and is quite a bit faster (like the difference between snails and 
> turtles!).
> With my assembly version, you have no real choices, but can only backup 
> all
> 256 drives from one SCSI drive to the other. Maybe you can get this BASIC
> backup program from Mark or Boisy. If it works for you, and you want a 
> full
> backup, I can send you my faster assembly version.
>
> -Steve-
>
> Perhaps the BASIC program is DSK2DSK.BAS ? It's listed in the docs on 
> their
> website, but it isn't on the disk I bought (v 1.1B it think). The Nitros9
> 'backup' command will copy a .DSK file to a device, but not the other way
> around. I would be most thankful for a copy of your assembly program. I'm
> sure it's much faster than whatever C program I'd put together.
>
> Thanks,
> jim
>
>
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