Transferring files from PC to PCW

Started by P5ychoFox, 17:27, 25 March 18

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P5ychoFox

Many thanks Geoff, that sounds the best way to do things. I appreciate your help with creating a program that could do that.

GeoffB17

Thanks for your interest.


BUT.....

I've been looking further at the .DSK file for that Angel.... game we were discussing a while back.

Does NOT look good.

Now that I look at things more closely, I find that that image shows that the first three tracks do appear to be 'normal', i.e. the first two are 'system' tracks, and the third track is a normal data track with 9 sectors, containing a shorter DIR area than normal, and the small prog that appears to be a loader.   So the disk inserted into a CP/M system will read normally (I assume) and will show one file, although I'm pretty sure that it will NOT be possible to activate the game by running the loader directly, it must be booted.

However, from the next track (the first 3 tracks are numbered 0 to 2, so the next track is track 3) the structure is different.   I note that there are now 5 sectors per track, and I believe that each sector is now 1024 bytes rather than the previous 512 bytes.

This specific disk cannot be recreated from a RAW image, as this process would require a destination disk with the correct format on already.   I don't think I can use any process I have to create such a blank disk, and the process for writing the raw data has no of knowing how/when to change the disk structure.

I can see three alternatives.

1. There may be a CPC program that can write the EXTENDED image - if you can get that done, the PCW may well be able to read the CPC made disk OK.   The CPW system certainly CAN read CPC disks (SYSTEM and DATA formats).

2. Find a PCW prog that will write EXTENDED format.   No reason why there should NOT be something, maybe just not written yet?

3. Might be possible to convert an EXTENDED .DSK into a 'normal' CPCEMU image which DSKWRITE will handle, but this will require there to be no other 'tricks' in the structure of the disk, so this might work for some EXTENDED .DSK files, but not others, which may be too hit-or-miss?

I did in fact find a prog that would convert between disk image files, and this includes the .DSK and .RAW types, but this prog saw ONLY the first three tracks of the image file and rejected the rest, so it does NOT cope with EXTENDED types.

I'll keep digging?

Geoff

GeoffB17

After some more digging...

There might be a way....

There IS a prog that will write extended images, but it's specifically a CPC prog, and I'm pretty sure it will work ONLY on a CPC.   For info, note the prog WRITEDSK.   This prog may need a 3.5" drive attached to the CPC mind you?

There is another prog, CPCDSKXP, which may be more useful, but this is a PC (XP) prog.   However, it will write an extended image onto a 3.5" disk for use on a CPC.   That is it's purpose.   That 3.5" disk could well end up with a single sided 40T format, which would mean it is in effect a PCW A: disk.   This is a step forwards.

Two things then.

Firstly, I'd suggest that you need to ensure that the disk IS SS (single Sided) so it should be wiped with a magnet before formatting/copying to make sure there's nothing on the second side.

Secondly, if the disk is to boot, you'll need an AB/BA switch which you should find out about.   This is a switch that you install into the disk cables on your PCW so that you swap over the DS (drive Select) lines on the cables so that A becomes B and B becomes A.   While this switch is operated there will be problems with CP/M etc, but for playing games this should be OK.   I guess.   I'm sure you can find info on doing this.   When the switch is set back to normal, then the PCW should appear as normal.   While the drives are switched over, then you should be able to boot off your 3.5" game disk in B:.

Does this seem viable?

Geoff

P5ychoFox

I have managed to get a few .DSK images transferred to 3" disk using DSKWRITE; many won't work due to the extended format but I'm happy it works at all. I won't have much time to spend on the subject for a while unfortunately but many thanks Geoff for your guidance.

P5ychoFox

#29
I'll update this post with a list below of .DSK images of games that can be converted from .DSK to .COM and copied over to a 3" disk using the above process (using DSKWRITE). It seems hit and miss but it does work for some.

Here's the current list of games that can be converted: Classic Collection 2, Demoler, Slider, ACE,

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