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NitrOS 9 and Floppy Disks

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Boisy Gene Pitre edited this page Jan 25, 2023 · 1 revision

Much of this information is considered legacy, since most people aren't using floppy drives any longer. It's presented here for posterity.

Using Floppy Drives

There are two double-sided 40 track DSK images ending in '_ds40_1.dsk', and '_ds40_2.dsk' for disks 1 and 2, respectively. For those with 3.5" 720K drives, an 80 track DSK image ending in '_ds80.dsk' is also included in the distribution.

If you wish to transfer the disk images to a floppy disk for use with a real CoCo, follow the steps below:

Windows/DOS

  1. Download and install the latest version of DSKINI/RETRIEVE at http://www.nitros9.org/

  2. Insert a blank double-sided floppy in to your drive (we assume B:)

  3. Type one of the following commands for 360K 5.25" and 720K 3.5" floppy disks, respectively:

DSKINI /T40 /D B: <diskimagefile>

DSKINI /T80 /D B: <diskimagefile>

Where is the image file you want to transfer to the floppy disk. The image file transfer should start. When it is done, take out the disk and try booting your CoCo with it.

Repeat steps 2-3 for each additional disk.

Linux

  1. Download and install the latest version of fdutils from http://fdutils.linux.lu/

  2. Once installed, edit the /usr/local/etc/mediaprm file and add the following lines at the end of the file:

     "COCO360":
      DS DD sect=18 cyl=40 ssize=256 tpi=48

     "COCO720":
      DS DD sect=18 cyl=80 ssize=256 tpi=96

  1. Insert your blank floppy into the drive on your Linux box.

  2. Type one of the following commands for 360K 5.25" and 720K 3.5" floppy disks, respectively:

setfdprm /dev/fd1 coco360

setfdprm /dev/fd1 coco720

This assumes your floppy drive is /dev/fd1. You may need to make adjustments to the above commands for your environment.

  1. After typing the setfdprm command, the floppy drive unit should spin for a second then stop. Type this command:
dd if=<diskimagefile> of=/dev/fd1

Where is the image file you want to transfer to the floppy disk. The image file transfer should start. When it is done, take out the disk and try booting your CoCo with it.

Repeat steps 3-5 for each additional disk.

Notes

Unfortunately, many of the FDC chipsets shipping on PC motherboards do NOT understand, and will probably crash your PC when a 256 byte/sector disk read or write is attempted. The Asus M2n-SLI Deluxe board is one such board.

When using DriveWire, the appropriate for your machine .dsk file can be downloaded and mounted directly as a fully read/write virtual disk. Please see for instance the tutorial at http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Getting_Started_with_DriveWire

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