[Coco] Help retrieving Coco disk images

Gene Heskett gheskett at wdtv.com
Wed Nov 12 17:34:03 EST 2014


On Wednesday 12 November 2014 17:19:24 Arthur Flexser did opine
And Gene did reply:
> Maybe worth checking the drive speed before buying a new drive?
> 
> Art

Yup, none of the belt style drives are now turning the correct speed as 
the belt has stretched and is now slipping.  Since the belts aren't 
generally available, I've been known to make do with whatever looks like 
its about the correct length. I haven't tried it on a spindle belt, but I 
do have a cdr/w in one of my shop machines whose little square section 
belt to run the tray in and out stretched and gave up.  Took some fussing 
but I cut about 1/4" out of it, the butt glued it back together with 
superglue, and several years later it is still working but the machine is 
now out of service & the new machine is all sata, where that drive was 
ide/atapi.
 
Whether that could be done with the thin flat belt remains to be seen, but 
if that is the problem, it might be worth a shot for really steady hands. 
Mine likely don't quite qualify these days.  So I'd make a jig of some 
sort to hold the ends steady and in touch with each other.

> On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 12:43 PM, John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org>
> 
> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > I was a Coco II (Disk Extended BASIC) user way back when.  I am
> > currently trying to preserve what data I had on those disks.
> > 
> > To do so, I have assembled a DOS machine out of old parts, including
> > a real 1.2MB FDD that works.  I have the COCO2EMU with its
> > RETRIEVE.EXE. I also have version 1.3 of RETRIEVE.EXE.
> > 
> > Both of them have only been able to read a single disk without
> > errors: a factory Tandy disk labeled "One-on-One".  I have no memory
> > of what that is.
> > 
> > On all my other disks, it generates a read error for sector 1 of
> > every track.  That is, if I ignore the error, it will read the rest
> > of that track's sectors but generate an error on sector 1 of the
> > next track. (Or perhaps it is ignoring the entire track and doing
> > nothing at all...)
> > 
> > Any ideas of what I might try here?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > John
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS


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