Accessing files on Dreamdisk 80tr double sided disks

[ChickenMan]

The Dreamdisk disks were originally imaged on a Floppio unit that was used for imaging Microbee disks, but was capable of imaging any CP/M disk. Now, more modern equipment like Greaseweazle, Fluxengine, SuperCard Pro, KryoFlux, etc are available with them all now recording at Flux level.

Once your image has been recorded, the problem then comes it need to converted to a bootable image for use in an emulator or written back to a floppy for use in real hardware. All the disks in the Archive Repository here are in the CPC DSK format, so can use the HxCFloppyEmulator_soft software to convert your images to that format.

Now, how to extract or add files to these DSK disk images. CPMTools is the obvious tool to use, so using a modified version of CPMTools (its in the Repository in Utilities), a Diskdefs entry was developed to allow you to list the disks file content, extract or add files to the image. So process is -

1. Install ONLY the CPMTools Modified version. There are Windows and Linus versions available in the Repository.
2. Run the Command Prompt on your PC and move to the folder where it was just installed.
3. To the diskdefs file add this to the bottom of the file using a simple text editor, like Notepad. NOTE This is ONLY suitable for our current 80 track double sided double density Dreamdisk disks we have in the repository.

# Sorcerer Dreamdisk 5.25" DS DD 80T (5.25" DS DD 80T 5x1024 s/t)
diskdef dream80
seclen 1024
cylinders 80
sectrk 5
heads 2
blocksize 2048
maxdir 256
skew 1
skewstart 1
datasect 1
boottrk 2
sidedness 1
os 2.2
end

3. Get a list of the files on the disk, type in this, followed by a Return. Change the file drive and folder to your images location.

cpmls -F -f dream80 -T dsk d:\sorcerer\sorcerer_dreamdisk_master.dsk

4. Create a sub-folder called files (or whatever) where you wish to extract the files to. Use this to extract all files in User Area 0 (change as needed) to the files folder -

cpmcp -f dream80 -T dsk d:\sorcerer\sorcerer_dreamdisk_master.dsk 0:*.* d:\sorcerer\files

5. To copy all files you have in a files folder to User Area 0 on a disk (there is a Blank Dreamdisk image in the Repository) use this

cpmcp -f dream80 -T dsk d:\sorcerer\sorcerer_dreamdisk_blank.dsk d:\sorcerer\files\* 0:

Change the drive, folder and user area to suit yourself and use the file name rather than *.* to suit your PC setup. However, if you create the files sub-folder within the CPMTools folder and copy the DSK images into the CPMTools folder also, there is no need to add the long drive and folder parts in all of the above.

[jltursan]

I'm still struggling to get into the Dreamdisk disk image format

As I'm using Windows 10, I've downloaded the Windows "cpmtools modified" version from the repository and added the following disk definition:

# Sorcerer Dreamdisk 5.25" DS DD 80T (5.25" DS DD 80T 5x1024 s/t)
diskdef dream80
seclen 1024
cylinders 80
sectrk 5
heads 2
blocksize 2048
maxdir 256
skew 1
skewstart 1
datasect 1
boottrk 2
sidedness 1
os 2.2
end

Then, after executing the following command:

Code: Select all

cpmls -F -f dream80 -T dsk sorcerer_dreamdisk_master.dsk

I get the error:

"cpmls: tracks parameter invalid or missing from diskdef"

Oh, well, seems that it needs "tracks" instead "cylinder", no problem; but once changed, I'm just getting trash executing the above command. Tested all dreamdisk disk images, none returns something understandable.

I've also tried to convert the .dsk to .img raw format and omitting "-T" parameter with no luck. Samdisk scan returns that the basic geometry is correct and seems to report that "sidedness" is 2 (out and out), so tried also "sidedness 2" parameter...no luck either.

Has anyone found a way to access these images?, maybe trying with Linux cpmtools version?

[ChickenMan]

Please do NOT alter the dream80 diskdef setting, if you do nothing will work.

Have you put the sorcerer_dreamdisk_master.dsk file in the folder you have the cpmtools installed ? The diskdef file need s to a pure text file saved in PC style, not unix or Mac type. Any foreign character in there will stop it from working, even invisible control characters.

I just tried that disk with the dream80 def and this is the result -

Image10.jpg (140.68 KiB) Viewed 55258 times

[jltursan]

Doh!, stupid mistake!. Seems that although I've downloaded the cpmtools from the repository, I've unzipped another windows version that simply put, it doesn't works at all. As stated in your first post, ONLY this version seems to work.

Now I get the right directory listings from the images. Time to test some things!

Is there a way to create a new blank CPM disk image?, right now I can only think of erasing all files of one of the available images...

[ChickenMan]

Glad you got it working

To make a blank disk image, there is one in the Repository as all I do is just use a Hex Editor to view the file and replace the first 00 with an E5 where the directory is for each file. I dont own a Sorcerer and MAME is read-only so cant save anything. But yes you can just delete all files using a real Sorcerer but Format and Sysgen can be used on a real Sorcerer of course, thats standard CP/M procedure.