How to create a sedoric disc

[jacqu]

Hi,

I’m trying to make a 3inch sedoric system disc.

I have a 3,5 inch floppy disc with sedoric 3.006 on it. I connected a 3,5 inch floppy drive to the slave connector of my Microdisc. I booted the Microdisc using Oric dos 1.1 on a 3 inch floppy. I copied all files from the 3,5 inch disc to a blank 3 inch disk formatted with oric dos. 2 files were copied : SYSTEM.DOS and BOOTUP.COM. I tried to boot sedoric from the 3 inch floppy, it almost worked, but the process hangs after printing the banner message « SEDORIC V3.0… ». The drive motor of the Microdisc keeps spinning without a stop.

Have you guys some clues to fix this ? Seems that sedoric waits for something to launch and this something is not behaving as expected.

Best,
Jacques

[Chema]

I am not sure you can make a Sedoric disc that way. You can put the 3.5 drive as 1 or A and the 3" as 2 or B, then boot Sedoric from A.

Then create a system disk on B.

You can configure the drives using the internal switches, if I am correct.

[Dbug]

Yeah, you need to boot on your Sedoric master disk, then format the other floppy and answer yes when it asks if you want it to be a "master" disk.

[jacqu]

Thanks for your suggestions. Before trying to convert the 3 inch drive into a slave, if possible, I would like to create a sedoric 3.0 on a 3inch floppy.

Using a Greaseweazle, I managed to make a Sedoric 3 + Nibble disk using the Nibble23&24.dsk file that I downloaded from "The Oric Site". This .dsk was in S/22/17 format, so it was compatible with my drive.

Unfortunately, all the sedoric3.dsk I found are in D/42/17, so they do not match the S/42/17 structure of my drive. This is probably a total noob question : is there an easy way to convert a D/42/17 disk into a S/42/17 disk ?

[Dbug]

Unfortunately, all the sedoric3.dsk I found are in D/42/17, so they do not match the S/42/17 structure of my drive. This is probably a total noob question : is there an easy way to convert a D/42/17 disk into a S/42/17 disk ?

Maybe try what I suggested:
- Copy your "sedoric3.dsk" into "sedoric3_single_sided.dsk"
- Boot Oricutron with "sedoric3.dsk" in A
- Insert "sedoric3_single_sided.dsk" as B
- Format B as S/42/17 and answer yes to "Master"

[iss]

To create SEDORIC image with 17/42/S: load any bootable DSK in Oricutron and INIT it without FORMAT :

Code: Select all

INIT A,17,42,S

When asked:
Format (Y/N): -> 'N'
Name: -> 'ENTER'
Init statement: -> 'ENTER'
Master disc (Y/N): -> 'Y'
That's it!

Attached is a working DSK.

[jacqu]

To create SEDORIC image with 17/42/S: load any bootable DSK in Oricutron and INIT it without FORMAT :

Code: Select all

INIT A,17,42,S

When asked:
Format (Y/N): -> 'N'
Name: -> 'ENTER'
Init statement: -> 'ENTER'
Master disc (Y/N): -> 'Y'
That's it!

Screenshot_20240503_144812.jpg

Attached is a working DSK.

Excellent, thank you so much iss and Dbug !

[jacqu]

The method below works perfectly with sedoric 3, but I failed miserably to make it work with sedoric 4.

First I tried Dbug's approach which consists in formatting drive B, but INIT failed with an error:
TRACK: 14 SECTOR:01 WRITE FAULT 10
?DISK I/0 ERROR

Then I tried iss's approach. INIT worked but generated a .dsk file which seems to be far too big (1.6MB). But it was bootable within oricutron and DIR reported S/42/17. When I loaded this .dsk within HxCFloppyEmulator, it reported a different disc format (see screenshot below, 80 tracks 2 sides). The generated .hfe was not readable with Clock signal nor oricutron. What am I doing wrong ?

To create SEDORIC image with 17/42/S: load any bootable DSK in Oricutron and INIT it without FORMAT :

Code: Select all

INIT A,17,42,S

When asked:
Format (Y/N): -> 'N'
Name: -> 'ENTER'
Init statement: -> 'ENTER'
Master disc (Y/N): -> 'Y'
That's it!

Screenshot_20240503_144812.jpg

Attached is a working DSK.

[iss]

...INIT worked but generated a .dsk file which seems to be far too big (1.6MB). But it was bootable within oricutron and DIR reported S/42/17. When I loaded this .dsk within HxCFloppyEmulator, it reported a different disc format (see screenshot below, 80 tracks 2 sides). The generated .hfe was not readable with Clock signal nor oricutron.

Indeed, it's bit tricky! Here you are:
If Oricutron detects write operation then it automatically extends the DSK to 128 tracks and 2 sides but doesn't updates the header file (this is bug ). So the new DSK size is:
256 (header) + { 6400 (raw track size) * 128 (tracks) * 2 (sides) } = 1638656 bytes

To create working HFE image:
1. Fix the header. With HEX editor put the correct sides and tracks values:

2. Truncate the DSK to correct size:
256 (header) + { 6400 (raw track size) * 42 (tracks) * 1 (sides) } = 269056 bytes
I'm using the 'dd' command line utility:

Code: Select all

$ dd if=OLD.dsk of=SED3-17-42-S.dsk bs=1 count=269056
269056+0 records in
269056+0 records out
269056 bytes (269 kB, 263 KiB) copied, 0.559783 s, 481 kB/s

3. Convert to HFE:

Code: Select all

$ hxcfe -finput:SED3-17-42-S.dsk -conv:HXC_HFE

Now clksignal works:

Attached are DSK and HFE images.

[jacqu]

Wow, that was impressive ! Your response helps me better understanding my own degree of noobness in this domain, and it feels abysmal Thanks a lot !

...INIT worked but generated a .dsk file which seems to be far too big (1.6MB). But it was bootable within oricutron and DIR reported S/42/17. When I loaded this .dsk within HxCFloppyEmulator, it reported a different disc format (see screenshot below, 80 tracks 2 sides). The generated .hfe was not readable with Clock signal nor oricutron.

Indeed, it's bit tricky! Here you are:
If Oricutron detects write operation then it automatically extends the DSK to 128 tracks and 2 sides but doesn't updates the header file (this is bug ). So the new DSK size is:
256 (header) + { 6400 (raw track size) * 128 (tracks) * 2 (sides) } = 1638656 bytes

To create working HFE image:
1. Fix the header. With HEX editor put the correct sides and tracks values: Screenshot_20240504_213251.jpg
2. Truncate the DSK to correct size:
256 (header) + { 6400 (raw track size) * 42 (tracks) * 1 (sides) } = 269056 bytes
I'm using the 'dd' command line utility:

Code: Select all

$ dd if=OLD.dsk of=SED3-17-42-S.dsk bs=1 count=269056
269056+0 records in
269056+0 records out
269056 bytes (269 kB, 263 KiB) copied, 0.559783 s, 481 kB/s

3. Convert to HFE:

Code: Select all

$ hxcfe -finput:SED3-17-42-S.dsk -conv:HXC_HFE

Now clksignal works:
Screenshot_20240504_214305.jpg

Attached are DSK and HFE images.

[jacqu]

I followed iss's tutorial for creating a Sedoric 4 17-42-S disk. For those interested, you can download the archive below.

S.42.17.zip

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