Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

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tjewell
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Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by tjewell »

Hi all!

Okay, I'm stumped. Any clever ideas how to copy a .VDK or DSK image to a real floppy? I've got a D64 with all the gizmos - a multi-pak, a CocoSDC and a standard Dragon Dos controller with dual floppies. Pere, you hinted that I should be able to do this with your DosPlus ROM, but I can't see how? Currently, my best idea is to unplug one of the floppies, replace it with my HxC2001, put the VDK image on that and then do a floppy to floppy copy. My ultimate goal is to get a bootable OS/9 floppy.

I'm sure I'm missing something here!

Thanks in advance, Tony.
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robcfg
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Re: Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by robcfg »

Hi Tony,

You want the floppy to be 5.25" or 3.5"?

There are some CoCo programs for Windows that may be able to write a Dragon floppy.
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by tjewell »

Hi Rob!

5.25 inch, ideally - and I don't have a PC to hand that I could hook a 5.25 inch drive up to. I'm convinced there's a way I can do this using the Dragon and all my peripherals! I might explore the HxC2001 approach tomorrow ...
pser1
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Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by pser1 »

Hi Tony,
do you have a drivewire adapter?
What I use to do is MOUNT4,"VDKFILE" that is in the drivewire server folder
And then DIR4 to be sure I got what I want
Last you do is:
BACKUP 4 to 1,1,40 if drive1 is destination and disk is 180k
BACKUP 4 to 1,2,40 if it is 360k
BACKUP 4 to 1,2,80 if it is 720K
Hope to hear from you soon
regards
pere
Last edited by pser1 on Wed May 31, 2017 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
pser1
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Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by pser1 »

hello Tony,
if you don't have the drivewire adapter but have an SDC, then the procedure is:
Copy the desired VDK files into the SDC inside a folder like 'VDK'
Then assuming we are going to use drive 1 (floppy) as destination, we need to have the VDK on drive 2, so we do:
SDRIVE2,"VDK/VDKFILE"
and verify with DIR2 that you see the correct data
Now the complicated thing! As you have the floppy with a 'normal DOS', when we will switch to the floppy,
the program that now is into ROM will be lost, so the computer will hang.
To avoid this, I issue this command
BANK n,R
The number (n) is the one that contains the DosPlus50 extended and R implies go MAP1
The computer restarts in RAM mode with the ROM copied into RAM and the VDK still linked to drive2
You verify that DIR2 still works well and then you have to issue
SDRIVE1, OFF so that the program will use the floppy drive 1 but the SDC drive 2
Finally you can do:
BACKUP 2 to 1,2,40 with the same parameters I wrote in last message
It is a complicated procedure that would be simplified if you had the same ROM on both devices: drive controller and SDC
cheers
pere
Last edited by pser1 on Wed May 31, 2017 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Copying a VDK to a real floppy ...

Post by pser1 »

@tjewell
let me know if you still have problems to copy to a real floppy
With your hardware you should be able to do that easily

cheers
pere
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