VDK conversion confusion

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
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vdc300
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:17 am

VDK conversion confusion

Post by vdc300 »

Hello All

Now the power supply problem is fixed...

I have a VCOPY question.

I have my old PC, BIOS allows for 360K or 1.2MB selection of the 5 1/4" floppy, old 51/4" drive attached to B:
Boot into MS-DOS
I can format in MS-DOS to 360k or 1.2M, no problem
I get a formatted Dragon DOS disk (from a real dragon), lets say 2 sides, 40T, put that in the drive.
VCOPY will recognise the format as dragon, but if I try to image it with VCOPY I just get a read error on every sector!

Do I have no hope or does anyone have any tips?

Thanks
vdc300
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:17 am

Re: VDK conversion confusion

Post by vdc300 »

Hello All again

I appear to have answered my own question, hope this helps anyone else with this frustration

First, Reading Dragon Disk Disk (A little weird, but works)
[1] On PC, use the DSKINIT util in MS-DOS to format the new disc.
[2] Insert Disc into Dragon and copy over the files from original to this new disk.
[3] Insert new disk back into PC and run vcopy to backup disk. It works!!!!

Now, Writing disk. (this one's pretty simple, I have switchable 40/80 track drives, must be switched to 40 to work, I was using 80T and nothing worked)
[1] Again, insert disk into PC, format with PC based DSKINIT.EXE
[2] Use vcopy.exe to write VDK image to disc.
[3] Make sure Dragon drive switched to 40T, insert disk and DIR. all good!

My main problem was the VCOPY says you must be using a disk originally formatted on the Dragon, but it appears DSKINIT.EXE on the PC does the job.

Thank you Stewart Orchard, excellent set of utilities.
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