Moving to Dragon world

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retrocanada76
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Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 3:26 pm

Moving to Dragon world

Post by retrocanada76 »

Hi all,

I just got a brand new Dragon 64 by Tano and now I'm on dragon scene :) It's just so beautiful!

Some of you guys knows my superide package and tools. I am an active coco developer.

Right now I need to find a way to transter disks to the dragon as I don't have an old pc (and I don't want to have one!). I've contacted lafuentes for the FDC.

I don't want to turn my dragon into a coco as I have a stack of cocos in my basement but only one dragon :)

I'm thinking maybe I can do it using a rawcopy on os-9 using my cocos and the superIDE. I copy the VDK image without the header and make a raw copy sector by sectors only writing the LSN0 at the very end. That should work right ?

Ultimately I could do a tape to dsk tool but that will give so much work on PC and Dragon.

Thanks for all,


Felipe.
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robcfg
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by robcfg »

Hi Felipe,

Welcome to the archive!

If you have a newer pc with a floppy drive, you can use the CoCoDSK program (i think that was the name, but not sure) to write images to disk.

The program writes dsk images, so you need to remove the first 12-16 bytes of a vdk file and you'll be able to write them.

I can tell you the right procedure during the weekend.

Regards,
Rob
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tormod
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by tormod »

Welcome to the Dragon club ;)

For your disk questions I don't think I can help much. What is it that you want to transfer from and to? From disk images on a PC? To a standard(?) 3.5" floppy drive through the Lafumat FDC?

I think dantyr asked about something similar here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2779&start=10#p6831 but don't know what he found out.

Cheers,
Tormod
admin
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by admin »

In theory anything that can do a raw write of the VDK image (with the header removed) should work - You can read/write dragon disks using DD in Linux providing you configure the FDC correctly to deal with 40 tracks and the correct sector sizes etc.

Or- modify SuperIDE to load and work with the Dragon (probably not too hard)
Simon Hardy
retrocanada76
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by retrocanada76 »

I made a rawcopy tool in OS-9 copied the entire 40-tracks vdk without the header into my superide os-9 image and performed the sector by sector copy (copying the first sector at last, because after that os-9 goes crazy on bad disk geometry). Seems to be all copied there, but I still don't have the dragon fdc.

Yes, ultimately i would like to patch superDOS to read from superIDE disk images, but for that i would need a disassembled superdos. It would be easier starting from that ;). My ideia is to replace floppy code for superide access.
admin
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by admin »

I think you and PRIME need to talk - I suspect he can help you here having built an SD card interface for the Dragon - It also works with tape images (CAS files) allowing direct loading of .CAS files as if they were loaded via tape (but at full speed!).

I attach his disassembled and commented DragonDOS 1.0 source which can be compiled for Dragon 32/64 and Dragon Alpha use - it may prove useful :D
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Simon Hardy
KenH
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by KenH »

retrocanada76 wrote:
Yes, ultimately i would like to patch superDOS to read from superIDE disk images, but for that i would need a disassembled superdos. It would be easier starting from that ;). My ideia is to replace floppy code for superide access.
The complete disassembled source for SuperDos is part of the toolshed repository (thanks to Phill)
http://toolshed.hg.sourceforge.net/hgwe ... 3/superdos
retrocanada76
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by retrocanada76 »

Wow, I didn't have paid attention to this, the toolshed code is an unravellled superDOS :) Now I can make it work.
KenH
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by KenH »

retrocanada76 wrote:Now I can make it work.
That would be a great contribution to the Dragon community :!:
Many of us have been wishing for SuperIDE support for the Dragon for years..
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tormod
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Re: Moving to Dragon world

Post by tormod »

By the way, I ported HDBDOS to the Dragon and made it run from RAM on a Dragon 32 some weeks ago. HDBDOS has support for the SuperIDE. I had intended to test it out on hardware (DriveWire) and merge it cleanly into Toolshed before announcing it, but if anyone wants to test it before I get to that I can share it as it is.
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