[Coco] Copying over an IO ERROR

[Allen Huffman]

> On Feb 3, 2015, at 6:01 PM, Bill <cwgordon at carolina.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> By using a modified version of what Allen showed me, I've been able to get all (but one) of the 1984 Rainbow on Tapes onto a .DSK image.
> 
> Now only a hundred or so to go <grin>


Now — the gotcha is any bad sectors are skipped, and if they had data, you end up with files that are missing inside. I made mine write out a sector of “******”s for bad sectors, so later I could identify which 256-byte blocks of data were gone.

I also had a second version that copied all the files using the COPY command instead of sectors. I knew some disks might only give me one shot and then I could never read them again, so I started with a sector-by-sector copy. Then, if there was an error, I would do a second attempt just getting files — an easy way to identify which file was bad.

I have things I have lost forever, but fortunately, my RGB-DOS hard drive platter has backups of most of my floppies back then — including one disk I was terribly sad to see missing (custom graphics I did for a Houston Boat Show for my father, when I had first gotten the CoCo 3).

Lots of gotchas along the way — but at least I have most of the files I wanted saved. Most, anyway.

--
Allen Huffman - PO Box 22031 - Clive IA 50325 - 515-999-0227 (vmail/TXT only)
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