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Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program

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In message <e5f0bc8f-8f2d-4c36-ab5b-88d13c83abb2@googlegroups.com>
 on 7 Jan 2016 Andrew Ferguson  wrote:

> I have now tried the DSK disk file that Geoff emailed me (dd successfully
> wrote it to a disk), but unfortunately it does not even attempt to boot.

If, by "dd", you are referring to the standard Unix tool or a clone of it for
Windows, then you won't get anywhere trying to use it to write a DSK file to
a real disc.  The dd utility will write *anything* to a disc, but it only
makes sense if the file that you write is a simple copy of the sectors on the
disc and nothing else in logical order, starting at track 0 and working up to
the highest track number, with the sectors in numerical order for each track.

A DSK file contains in addition various extra things to describe the
structure of the actual disc, so that an emulator can properly emulate the
operating system reading from a real disc. This includes being able to
emulate non-standard sector numbering which can be found in copy-protected
discs.

If you study the DSK format it would be possible to write a script to pull
out of the DSK file the sectors in the right order and dump them to a file
which could then be written successfully with dd.  I don't know whether such
a utility has been written by any one.  I think a piece of software I wrote a
long time ago will do it, but unfortunately that only runs on RISC OS.

-- 
Matthew Phillips
Durham

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Thread

LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500@gmail.com> - 2016-01-02 06:14 -0800
  Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Enrique Garcia <enriquegg@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 00:40 -0800
  Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-03 15:26 +0000
    Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500@gmail.com> - 2016-01-04 10:32 -0800
      Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-04 23:17 +0000
      Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-04 23:50 +0000
      Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-05 00:37 +0000
      Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-05 17:05 +0000
        Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500@gmail.com> - 2016-01-06 08:23 -0800
          Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-06 18:39 +0000
            Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500@gmail.com> - 2016-01-06 12:59 -0800
              Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-06 23:00 +0000
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Floppy Software <floppysoftware@gmail.com> - 2016-01-07 11:27 -0800
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500@gmail.com> - 2016-01-07 13:11 -0800
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-01-07 22:45 +0000
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program seasip.webmaster@gmail.com - 2016-01-07 15:17 -0800
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program "Geoff Barnard" <geoff@jgb17.co.uk> - 2016-01-08 00:42 +0000
                Re: LocoLink: Unable to Load PCW Program seasip.webmaster@gmail.com - 2016-01-08 06:23 -0800

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