CoCo Floppies: Was:These darned old computers

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Aug 28 17:41:00 2002

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote:
> I haven't worked on my M.2 for a long time (since I first got it about 3 or 4
> yrs. ago, and I'm also missing the cables for the 3 HDs) It was
> recommended by several people that I transfer the programs I have from 8" to
> 5 1/4 disks (unless bit-rot has already got to them) and I believe there's a faq
> on how to do that. Do you know if the disk controller on the model 2 /16 is
> the same as on the other RS models ? If so possibly I could just transfer
> them to another format.

The Model 2/16 is MFM, with a 500K data transfer rate.
The Model 1 is FM with a 125K data transfer rate
The Model 1 with "doubler", and Model 3/4, and Coco, and M100 DVI, are MFM
with 250K data transfer rate.

All seem to be Western Digital, with reasonably "ordinary" format, except
for D.A.M. issues with model 1.

What you COULD do is to cable a 5.25" "1.2M" drive to the Model
2/16. When using 600 Oerstedt disks (aka "1.2M"), it doesn't have to know
that it is no longer talking to an 8".


> Undoubtably the 8" disks would copy (discounting bit-rot) and I have seen it
> mentioned on disk recovery sites but I can't afford thier high prices. It used
> an early Shugart SS/sd(?) 8" disk. I guess it would require some sort of disk
> image program for 8 " floppies.

WHAT are you referring to?
Reading disks with another machine?
Reading the disks with that machine and serial transfer?


> Was there any disk image program for the model 2 ?

WHAT are you referring to?
Software running on Model 2 that could read raw sectors from disks
from other machines?
Software running on Model 2 that could read files from disks from
other machines?
Software running on Model 2 that could create a raw file of the sectors of
a Model 2 disk?
Received on Wed Aug 28 2002 - 17:41:00 BST