[Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M controllers, and EDTASM pak.

[Bill Pierce]

Chris, If the image is on say disk 4 vhd, you don't need to driveon driveoff so much, just driveoff. 4-255 will copy directly  to 0-3 and reverse.
driveof and driveon just turns 0-3 vhd on and off, the rest of the system (4-255) is still active. I use drive4 as a copy drive to move files around. You just can't copy from 0-3 flp to 0-3 vhd unless you do like you said and do driveoff driveon.
The only thing that's not allowed is copying from vhd to vhd or vhd to dsk (virtual) both in drivewire. In that case you would have to do as you stated below. Or use "wired" as it will do just what you're suggesting internally.
If I need to backup an entire disk to floppy, I make sure the disk is on 4-255, then driveoff:backup 4-255 to 0-3, according to which disk you're using.
It's really confussing in the beginning to say the least. But once you get your head around it, it makes sense.

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
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E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Smith <csmith at wolfram.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Fri, Aug 23, 2013 1:17 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M controllers, and EDTASM pak.




----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bill Pierce" <ooogalapasooo at aol.com>
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 11:19:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M 
controllers, and EDTASM pak.
> 
> 
> Mark,
> To copy from DW4 to real floppys, in hdbdos you just type DRIVEOFF.
> This disables the 0-3 virtual drives and allows you to access the
> real drives. You can copy from disks 4-255 to 0-3 or 0-3 to 4-255 as
> well as "BACKUP".
> DRIVEON reinstates the 0-3 virtual drives
> 
> To make copies from single virtual disks, just copy any disk image to
> any drive above 3 in hdbdos. Since you can't access a single disk
> image and a vhd at the same time with a coco in DW, this would have
> to be done in an emulator.
> Also, I think "Wired" will do this for you on a Coco... haven't tried
> it yet.
> https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/wired
>  He has some other interesting software there as well

Ok, so if we want to copy single files from a drivewire image to a floppy, that 
should work this way:

DRIVEON
CLOAD[M] ...
DRIVEOFF
CSAVE[M] ...
ETC, ETC...

If we want to copy a disk on which basic can't get at the files -- one from OS-9 
for example -- are we out of luck because the floppy can't be above ID 3?  I 
suppose it may be possible to write some code that would load a few kilobytes of 
data into RAM from the disk, driveoff, and write them back out to the correct 
place.  It would take several cycles to duplicate an entire image.  Is this 
doable?  I'm digressing a bit here, but you've just provided the closest thing I 
currently have to an answer to a question I've been asking people for months. :)

Chris

-- 
Christopher Smith
Systems Engineer, Wolfram Research

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