I'm trying to make a copy of the Tandy CP/M Plus 1.00.00 disks on my Model 4D. The target is formatted then when the computer tries to copy, I always get an error on track 1. The drives have passed all diagnostics (Floppy Doctor) and work fine with TRSDOS and LS-DOS so I'm reasonable sure they're OK. Is there a trick to making
COPYDISK work? A patch maybe?

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On Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 7:27:24 PM UTC-7, Thomas Lake wrote:

I'm trying to make a copy of the Tandy CP/M Plus 1.00.00 disks on my Model 4D.
The target is formatted then when the computer tries to copy, I always get an error on track 1. The drives have passed all diagnostics (Floppy Doctor) and work fine with TRSDOS and LS-DOS so I'm reasonable sure they're OK. Is there a trick to making

COPYDISK work? A patch maybe?

I don't know if it helps but I had similar troubles copying Color Computer disks.

I wound up formatting them on an old 386 desktop with a 5.25" drive and then copying them on a real Coco.

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On Fri, 24 Aug 2018, neilsmorr@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 7:27:24 PM UTC-7, Thomas Lake wrote:

I'm trying to make a copy of the Tandy CP/M Plus 1.00.00 disks on my Model 4D.
The target is formatted then when the computer tries to copy, I always get an error on track 1. The drives have passed all diagnostics (Floppy Doctor) and work fine with TRSDOS and LS-DOS so I'm reasonable sure they're OK. Is there a trick to making

COPYDISK work? A patch maybe?

I don't know if it helps but I had similar troubles copying Color
Computer disks.

I wound up formatting them on an old 386 desktop with a 5.25" drive and
then copying them on a real Coco.

Is there an issue of the actual floppy disc?

The Radio Shack Color COmputer started with single sided floppies, and
maybe 35 tracks per disc. Surely older Radio Shack systems did too. And
then later there were third party improvements. I have some odd disks for
the CoCo becasue when I bought a floppy drive, it was from a third party,
with a ROM that allowed double sided operation, but in an odd fashion.
Later iterations didn't do things that way.

So if the firmware allows for only 35 tracks, and/or single sided, but the floppy is 40 tracks and/or double sided, an older arrangement can't copy
that "newer" floppy.

Michael

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On Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 5:18:41 PM UTC-7, Michael Black wrote:

The Radio Shack Color COmputer started with single sided floppies, and
maybe 35 tracks per disc. Surely older Radio Shack systems did too. And then later there were third party improvements. I have some odd disks for the CoCo becasue when I bought a floppy drive, it was from a third party, with a ROM that allowed double sided operation, but in an odd fashion.
Later iterations didn't do things that way.

So if the firmware allows for only 35 tracks, and/or single sided, but the floppy is 40 tracks and/or double sided, an older arrangement can't copy
that "newer" floppy.

Michael

IIRC, the Coco formats the floppy with too small a starting gap on the tracks. Formatting them on the PC fixed that.

I needed it, because I needed to read the disks on the PC for an emulator and for transfer to the internet etc.

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On Sat, 25 Aug 2018, neilsmorr@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 5:18:41 PM UTC-7, Michael Black wrote:

The Radio Shack Color COmputer started with single sided floppies, and
maybe 35 tracks per disc. Surely older Radio Shack systems did too. And
then later there were third party improvements. I have some odd disks for >> the CoCo becasue when I bought a floppy drive, it was from a third party,
with a ROM that allowed double sided operation, but in an odd fashion.
Later iterations didn't do things that way.

So if the firmware allows for only 35 tracks, and/or single sided, but the >> floppy is 40 tracks and/or double sided, an older arrangement can't copy
that "newer" floppy.

Michael

IIRC, the Coco formats the floppy with too small a starting gap on the tracks. Formatting them on the PC fixed that.

Now that you mention it, wasn't there an incompatibility between the
floppy controller IC used in the "IBM PC" and the controller IC used in
the CoCo's floppy controller? I'd forgotten about that until your reply,
I just rmemember some vague issue mentioned in Rainbow.

Michael

I needed it, because I needed to read the disks on the PC for an
emulator and for transfer to the internet etc.

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On Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 10:27:24 PM UTC-4, Tom Lake wrote:

I'm trying to make a copy of the Tandy CP/M Plus 1.00.00 disks on my Model 4D.
The target is formatted then when the computer tries to copy, I always get an error on track 1. The drives have passed all diagnostics (Floppy Doctor) and work fine with TRSDOS and LS-DOS so I'm reasonable sure they're OK. Is there a trick to making

COPYDISK work? A patch maybe?

I bought that package originally and it would not boot on my early Model 4. Radio Shack, the jerks they were, would not refund my purchase since the shrink wrap had been opened. So I let it sit on my shelf. Many years later I acquired a newer Model 4
that would boot them. I didn't bother trying to copy them at that point. The BIOS and utilities were quite buggy and they never fixed them to my knowledge.

Even more years later I used a PC with Teledisk to image them. As it happens, they use an 18 x 256 byte sector format on the boot track 0, same as the other TRS-80 Model III and 4 double density disks. Tracks 1 to 39 were 8 x 512 byte sectors.

Is the COPYDISK you are using one of the CP/M utilities? If not, it won't work on the CP/M Plus disks due to that track format difference.

Amardeep

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On Sunday, December 30, 2018 at 9:20:47 AM UTC-5, asc...@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 10:27:24 PM UTC-4, Tom Lake wrote:

I'm trying to make a copy of the Tandy CP/M Plus 1.00.00 disks on my Model 4D.
The target is formatted then when the computer tries to copy, I always get an error on track 1. The drives have passed all diagnostics (Floppy Doctor) and work fine with TRSDOS and LS-DOS so I'm reasonable sure they're OK. Is there a trick to making

COPYDISK work? A patch maybe?

I bought that package originally and it would not boot on my early Model 4. Radio Shack, the jerks they were, would not refund my purchase since the shrink wrap had been opened. So I let it sit on my shelf. Many years later I acquired a newer Model

4 that would boot them. I didn't bother trying to copy them at that point. The BIOS and utilities were quite buggy and they never fixed them to my knowledge.

Even more years later I used a PC with Teledisk to image them. As it happens, they use an 18 x 256 byte sector format on the boot track 0, same as the other TRS-80 Model III and 4 double density disks. Tracks 1 to 39 were 8 x 512 byte sectors.

Is the COPYDISK you are using one of the CP/M utilities? If not, it won't work on the CP/M Plus disks due to that track format difference.

Amardeep

I'm using COPYDISK right off the CP/M Plus diskettes. You'd think at least that would work!

Tom L

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No surprise if COPYDISK was too buggy to copy the boot disks. Their whole package was full of bugs galore. Did you notice the cursor doesn't even blink in a stable manner?

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