[Coco] Copying CoCo diskettes to PC

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Oct 29, 2013 11:17 PM, "Mathieu Bouchard" <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:
>
> Le 2013-10-30 à 01:25:00, Nick Marentes a écrit :
>
>
>> Is there a need to create real disks anymore? Especially on a PC.
>
>
> I mentioned writing to diskettes in case someone recommends software I
could use to ease transfers the other way around, for example something
that could transmit whole disk images from a CoCo disk drive through the
serial port of a CoCo, so that I can save disk images on the PC.
>
> But I will probably buy a new disk drive or drive adaptor.
>

For most purposes, you can use DriveWire to copy physical disks on the coco
to image files on a PC and vice versa.  You can also then run your coco off
the disk images instead of physical floppies, which is generally faster and
convenient.  You need a serial cable but everything else is free.

The exception is any programs that talk to the drive using their own code
rather than using the basic ROM routines or OS9 drivers.  That software
will not run from an image and those disks may or may not be backed up in a
restorable form.   Mostly this is copy protected games.

You may wish to look at what is already imaged and available online.  Most
coco software can be found in one archive or another, sometimes even
patched to work with DriveWire or other storage adapters besides the FDC.