[Coco] Backup of HDB-DOS drives

[Jim Hickle]

--- 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