File2VDK anyone?

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
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Bosco
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by Bosco »

tormod wrote:Bosco, unless Fil2VDK translates DECB binaries into Dragon DOS binaries, this won't work because the RUN command is a Dragon DOS command that will load and run only a file in Dragon DOS format.
Thanks for clearing that up. :)

I suspected it was the reason but wasn't 100% clear what `DECB' was? :oops:

Yeah, I usually load bins straight into memory in XRoar but I'd like to be able to cover all bases, (Dragon and CoCo), when distributing future work.
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rolfmichelsen
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by rolfmichelsen »

Tormod is right about the lack of DECB support in File2VDK. The goal was to create a dead simple tool, so it only supports DragonDos binaries. This works well with asm6809. For a simple tool, I didn't want to start introducing support for other file formats that would quickly require command line switches and ruin the drag and drop support.

Anyway, the drag and drop bug is now fixed. Download the new snapshot to get the working verison. Additional improvements may appear in the future, but this tool will be kept simple.

-- Rolf
zephyr
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by zephyr »

Bosco wrote: I suspected it was the reason but wasn't 100% clear what `DECB' was? :oops:
Disk Extended Color BASIC (CoCo DOS).
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Bosco
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by Bosco »

rolfmichelsen wrote:The goal was to create a dead simple tool, so it only supports DragonDos binaries.
I completely agree and File2VDK fits the bill perfectly!
Thanks for creating this great tool for us. :D
zephyr wrote:Disk Extended Color BASIC (CoCo DOS).
Ahhhh... now I understand. :)
tjewell
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by tjewell »

Hi all, apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but I was wondering if anything had changed here? In an ideal world, I'm looking for a command line program that I could use under Linux/MacOs to manipulate VDK files - add, remove and extract files, that kind of thing. Rolf's code looks great, but is Windows based and I'd like something I could use in a script. Has anyone written or discovered one in the last 6 months?

Cheers, Tony
tjewell
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by tjewell »

Just thinking aloud here - how different are the Coco DSK and Dragon VDK formats? Might this be what I'm looking for, with a few Dragon tweaks?

http://toolshed.sourceforge.net/ToolShed.html#decb
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tormod
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by tormod »

The question is the difference between the DECB file system and the Dragon Data file system. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were similar. They are briefly explained in Graham E. Kinns' information at http://dragon32.info/ The DECB disk images in Toolshed are simple sector dumps without any disk image header.
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rolfmichelsen
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by rolfmichelsen »

DragonDos and DECB are quite different, both in terms of what data it can represent and how that data is represented on the disk sectors.

-- Rolf
pser1
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by pser1 »

Hello friends,
The question put by Tony was to distinguish between DSK and VDK, and this is very simple:
- VDK is a sequence of sectors with a header that could be any length.
The recomended length is 256 because that way it is Drivewire compatible too.
- The DSK is just s VDK without the header.
The DSK is the default virtual image I have seen in the CoCo forum
We needed that format to use the CoCo-SDC with the Dragons untill Darren Atkinson
modified the firmware to accept VDK files with header length from 0 to 256 bytes.

From that period when we needed DSK images I made a converter: VDK2DSK
this simply skips the header and gets as output the sectors series
VDK2DSK.zip
(4.06 KiB) Downloaded 380 times
If you have VDK that have headers with length other than 256 bytes, you can convert
them to be compatible with Drivewire with this other converter that rounds the
header to exactly 256 byes:
VDK2DW4.zip
(4.26 KiB) Downloaded 368 times
cheers
pere
pser1
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Re: File2VDK anyone?

Post by pser1 »

Now if we want to compare CoCo format with Dragon formats, then
- a CoCo disquet has 35 tracks each 18 sectors, so 630 sectors each 256 bytes = 161,280 bytes (unformatted)
- A Dragon disquet can exist in four different flavours:
--- 1 side single density: 40 tracks x 18 sectors = 720 sectors = 184,320 bytes (unformatted)
--- 1 side double density (rare): 80 tacks x 18 sectors = 1440 sectors = 368,640 bytes
--- 2 sides single density (normal): 40 tracks x 18 sectors x 2 sides = 1440 sectors = 368,640 bytes
--- 2 sides double density: 80 tacks x 18 sectors x 2 sides = 2880 sectors = 737,280 bytes

Remember that Dragon has the track 20 as Directory (FAT and entries) and most of the Operating Systems
do use track 16 as an automatic backup copy of track 20.
The granularity is at sector level, each one represented by a bit in the FAT.
On the other side CoCo uses track 17 as directory, being the granularity half track (9 sectors) aka 'granule'
Having exactly 68 granules in total (directory not used!)

Of course this is only related to standard Dragon DOS or RSDOS operating systems, when using OS-9, Flex
or NitrOS-9 things use to be different.

cheers
pere
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