[Coco] 5-1/4″ DS DD 80 track drive, 300 RPM mod

[Robert Gault]

Kandur wrote:
> Bill, I have an HD backup set, made on a Coco-3 running OS_9 L2,
> on 28 floppies, created by the HDKIT archiver/backup program.
> Just want to restore/unpack them to any HD, anywhere.
> Here is one question for you, while running nos-9 L2 dw on the Coco,
> how can I copy a file from a mounted virtual disk on the server?
>
> Kandur

Kandur,

Finally the information needed to answer your questions. :)

The restoration will depend on the HDKIT program, the hard drives still 
functional on the Coco, and the actual format of the original hard drive.

If HDKIT contained code to talk directly to a hard drive, then you can only 
restore your disks if they can be mounted on the same type of floppy used to 
create them with the same format hard drive from which the files were taken.
If HDKIT makes use of "proper" OS-9 protocols using the OS-9 drivers to talk to 
hard or floppy drives, then you should be able to recreate your hard drive 
whether you use DW4 as a tool or not. It should not matter that if the current 
hard drives match the format of the original hard drives.
It will be crucial that the floppies are readable on your current floppy drives. 
360 RPM floppies won't read on 300 RPM drives. HD floppies don't work well on MD 
floppy drives.

I don't have any information about the HDKIT programs so can't guess how far you 
can get.
You can run dmode on your current hard drive, ex. dmode /h0 , to get the format 
information. You can also enter    free /h0    and get more information. Neither 
of these will indicate if your hard drive devotes a section to Basic virtual 
disks, but that's not an issue if all the floppy backups are OS-9.

As written,
 >Just followed these instructions:
 >"An example, to copy a disk from the CoCo to the PC:
 >Step 1. Mount a blank .dsk image in Drive 0 of the server on your PC .
 >Step 2. Type DRIVE#0 to switch to the virtual drive 0 (this is the default).
 >Step 3. Type DRIVE OFF 0 to turn off virtual disk 0 on drive 0 and turn on
 >	floppy drive 0 connected to your CoCo.
 >Step 4. Insert your floppy into the CoCo's floppy disk drive 0 and type BACKUP 
 >0 TO 1
 >The DriveWire and HDB-DOS will then transfer the contents of the real floppy
 >to the virtual disk 1 in the drive 0 slot."

The above is not correct. You can't copy between DW4 drive0 and a floppy drive0 
unless you can temporarily store the data in memory or a RAM drive. The 
instructions will work if you mount the disk in DW4 drive1, have a floppy in 
Coco drive0, and enter   DRIVE OFF 0   .
The quote only make sense if you turn on the DW4 HDBDOS Translation and then you 
are talking about a virtual hard drive mounted in DW4 not a floppy.

Robert