CoCo/OS-9 escavation update…

Floppies. Lots of floppies!

A few weeks ago I dug out my old Tandy Color Computer 3 and began the project of archiving all my old floppy disks to disk image files. I am using Darren Atkinson’s CoCoSDC interface for this project, and it has been an amazing pleasure to work with so far.

I have backed up probably well over 300 Disk BASIC floppy disks, and have hundreds more OS-9 disks to get to next. I am also dealing with files that are on Compact Flash cards plugged in to the Cloud-9 SuperIDE interface (I never bothered with a physical IDE drive by the time I got that interface in 2004), and even some on my old SyQuest EZ135 SCSI drive using a KenTon SCSI interface.

IDE, SD, SCSI and Floppy interfaces.
IDE, SD, SCSI and Floppy interfaces.

This mixture of controllers, device drivers and “hard drives” has given me much time to revisit how things worked back then. Right now, I have a fresh 128MB .dsk image on an SD card in my CoCoSDC and I am backing up an EZ135 SCSI disk to it. It is taking hours (and just finished as I type this), but the end result is an exact clone sector-by-sector, including any deleted files I may want to peek at again. (It would probably have been much faster just to use a file copy tool, like “arc”, and go “arc -am /h0 /sd1”).

Along the way, I have discovered programs I had forgotten writing. For instance, in my pre-OS-9 days, I knew I had written a MIDI librarian program for the Kawai K1 synthesizer. It was sold by Rulaford Research:

I wrote a MIDI librarian for the Kawai K1.
I wrote a MIDI librarian for the Kawai K1.

…but I had forgotten I wrote a Layaway program for an East Texas furniture store:

Apparently, I wrote a layaway program, too.
Apparently, I wrote a layaway program, too. This was before spell checkers, and as a teenager, my spelling were not good.

During my disk-cavations, I unearthed many more projects I had forgotten about. Some were completed and deployed (freeware tools, music demos, utilities), and others were work-in-progress items.

An unfinished CoCo 3 OS-9 3-D maze game inspired by the old "Phantom Slayer" by MED SYSTEMS.
An unfinished CoCo 3 OS-9 3-D maze game inspired by the old “Phantom Slayer” by MED SYSTEMS.

And so much more! I have also found old documentation to the Sub-Etha products, and discovered I wrote an MM/1 program I had completely forgotten about – MegaBanners (an updated MiniBanners, but using Joel Hegberg’s high-resolution font engine). Wild.

I guess since most of this was twenty years ago, and has been packed away since then, I can be forgiven for my faulty memories. It sure has been fun rediscovering things.

After a few more weeks, I expect to have all of my old floppies and hard drives archived to the CoCoSDC. After that, a huge project begins: sorting and organizing everything.

Once I get to this point, I plan to put together some .dsk images of the old Sub-Etha Software items for folks to check out. They will be made available as shareware with the hope of making a few dollars. We’ll see if that works in 2015.

More to come…

2 thoughts on “CoCo/OS-9 escavation update…

  1. Scott Haley

    >> Once I get to this point, I plan to put together some .dsk images of the old Sub-Etha Software items for folks to check out. They will be made available as shareware with the hope of making a few dollars. We’ll see if that works in 2015.

    Sounds great ! I’m looking forward to it.
    Scott / KD5NJR

    Reply
  2. Pingback: CoCo VR | Sub-Etha Software

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