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Model 4 FreHD question - Loading DSK images

K

k0d3g3ar

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
Messages
111
Location
Scottsdale, Arizona
Hi there, I recently got my newly acquired FreHD system working for my Model 4GA machine, and its great. And its working for the auto-boot ROM mod as well, so I'm stoked to have this up and running.

Now I'm trying to populate my machine with software. Lots of software. I did the customary Google search looking for sites with disk images to download, and although I found a bit, it seems a lot of folks who have posted software have shut down their servers, etc. Not sure if this is some sort of copyright thingy, but I'd be shocked if 30 yr old software copyrights are being policed. But I guess nothing would surprise me....

Anyway back to my question. I found the System80 Disk Images site from Tezza and its great. Lots of stuff there, so I grabbed what I could on my Linux Mint machine, copied the DSK files over to a SD Card and put it in the FreHD. Using VHDUTL (DIR) it sees the files, but when I attempt to mount them, its giving me the following error:

Mount failed
Error File/dir object invalid

Thinking that this might have something to do with copying the files from a Linux box to the SD card, I tried it on Windows. Same error.

The FreHD works fine, because I wouldn't be able to use it for booting if it didn't. But I just can't seem to see these files.

Thinking that maybe its got to do with which OS I'm booted into, I tried this with LSDOS, LDOS and NEWDOS and it seems to be the same error in each case.

Does anyone know what causes this error, or is the VHDUTL software open source and source code out there so I can scour through it to determine the cause of this error?

I'm probably doing something really basic here, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Thanks
K
 
Hold on... I think I may have solved my own issue here. As I tried to resurrect my own memories of the TRS-80 hey-days, I realized that the DSK image format was designed for emulators, and there are various subformats to be compatible with the various floppy disk drive formats that came out back then. This then made me realize that the VHDUTL mount command is dealing with HARD DRIVE images, and not DSK (floppy) images.

Consequently I've moved a little forward on this quest. Now I realize that in order to get content to the FreHD, I need to use the IMPORT2 utility to read the raw files from the SD card, and in order to get those files, I have to extract them from the DSK files. Consequently I'm realizing that I need to do that off the TRS-80 first, and then move them with IMPORT2. I have been successful with IMPORT2, so I'm pretty sure I might be on the right track now.

If not, please correct me....

K
 
If you can break the individual files out of the .dsk images and put them on the SD card, then you can use IMPORT2 to copy them into your emulated hard disk images on your model 4.

Another method which I have used is to mount the virtual hard disk image(s) from your SD card in a TRS-80 emulator such as XTRS, also mount any .dsk image, and then copy the files from the .dsk image into the virtual hard disk image in the emulator.

Still another variant is to use an emulator to mount up just the .dsk images, then use the EXPORT utility to write the individual files out to your PC/Mac/Linux filesystem. Then you can copy those files over to and SD card in order to IMPORT2 them with FreHD on your real Model 4.

I'm not sure what utilities there might be for manipulating .dsk images directly on a modern computer without needing to mount them up in an emulation of a TRS-80. I don't recall finding many such utilities that I could use on my Mac, and I haven't paid much attention to what PC-based utilities there might be.

I still have limited experience with FreHD, and I'm even new to the Model I/III/4 family and their various operating systems. I hope this helps you.

Edited to add: IMPORT/EXPORT are utilities for accessing your host computer's filesystem under emulators such as XTRS, and IMPORT2/EXPORT2 are very similar utilities for accessing the SD card filesystem on a real TRS-80 machine with a FreHD.
 
Thank you. I was going down your recommended path, so its great to know its the right direction. I love your idea about using an emulator to mount both the FreHD image and the DSK image, and then just copy between them. That will save a lot of time.

I'm running Linux Mint 13 here with XTRS. Do you know how to get it to work? Its asking for Model 1 ROMs which I don't have, and even if I can find them on the 'Net somewhere, I'm completely unsure where to put them so XTRS sees them. Any ideas?
 
I've only ran emulators on my Mac, so I don't know the specifics of getting any of them running under Linux.
 
I fear you'll have to wait for the XTRS users to see this...
My emulator is dos-based and handles 3/4/4p... tho I THINK it also does 'I'...
:D
 
K,

I'm not sure how much I can help as I know nothing about the Linux world or Xtrs.

However the format the disk images are in might be important. They are 80 track, single sided jv1-type disk images. In the Windows/MS-DOS world there are lots of utilities which can get the files out of these images. Matthew Reed's TRSTOOLS found here is one.
http://www.trs-80emulators.com/trstools/

Also download http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/system-80/s80-roms.zip and you might find the ROM you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Tez
 
Oh another point is not all Model 1 software is compatible with the Model III/4 so results with the M1 files may vary on a III/4.

Tez
 
Hi.

I am the main author of the FreHD, and I have released a LSDOS utility (works with LDOS5 and LSDOS6) which allows to mount one or more .dsk image, directly from the SD card. It is written as an LSDOS driver, so you use it with SYSTEM(DRIVE=x,DRIVER="DSK/DCT"). The driver will prompt you for the image name, then you can *read* from that image (works great with DISKCOPY to make new boot disks, for example). The dsk image is mounted read-only, there is no support for writes. The usual emulated formats are supported : DMK, JV1 and JV3.

Of course, it is faster to do everything from an emulator (I use xtrs), prepare your hard drive image, then use it on the real machine. But as I said, to recreate real floppy, DISKCOPY and this driver are your friends.

-Fred
 
Hi Fred, firstly a HUGE Thank you for doing the FreHD. Its allowed me to revive my TRS-80 memories and works great.

Can you point me towards where to find that driver? I bought my FreHD from Ian Mavric and I'm not sure if it comes on his CD or not. Or can I download this somewhere?

Thanks again
K
 
k0d3g3ar,
I've posted a [HOWTO] on the Ubuntu Linux Forum with the information for xtrs.

UBUNTU [HOWTO]:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1589634&highlight=xtrs

Also a [HOWTO] for SDLTRS, and a [HOWTO] for Z80 Emulator.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1815406&highlight=xtrs
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1801324&highlight=xtrs


I've used the howto's on Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, and on an earlier version of Fedora.

Slackware [HOWTO]:
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:emulators:start
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:emulators:trs80
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:emulators:xtrs
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:emulators:z80


DEBIAN [HOWTO]:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=67657&p=385953&hilit=xtrs#p385953
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=66644&p=381433&hilit=xtrs#p381433
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=61891&p=359796&hilit=xtrs#p359796


Larry - Sun City
 
Last edited:
Hi Larry, that's awesome! Thank you for going to the trouble to do this. I managed to compile sdltrs myself, and got it working. But in the end I used a Windows machine to do the file extraction from DSK files and copies. I'd prefer to have done this in Linux. Let me take a look at the code and see if I can contribute in some way to this.

Thanks again
K
 
Hi Tezza,

Thanks for the tip on TRSTOOLS. I just got my FreHD assembled and couldn't figure out how to get the files out of the images. TRSTOOLS was the trick.

-Evan
 
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