The TRS-80 Journey Continues

[Mike Katz]

I don't know about TRS-DOS but a lot of early floppy disk format 
programs had an option to make the formatted disk bootable or not. This 
would copy the bootloader to the appropriate location on the floppy, 
copy the OS to the floppy and update any necessary pointers to the OS on 
the floppy.

Usually a ROM bootloader would load a known sector (usually Track 0, 
Sector 0) and execute the code from that sector.  That code would then 
get the address of the Operating System from the disk (either in a fixed 
location on disk or a fixed location in the directory) and load the OS.

On 5/11/2022 9:18 AM, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
> <snip>
>> Based on the results of my last attempt, I doubt it would work.
>> Looks like there is a need to figure out how to install a boot
>> block and what files need to be copied to make usable floppies
>> for all the OSes.  Yet another task to work on.
>>
>> I still can't believe there is no documented way to do this
>> already!!
>>
>> bill
>>
>>
> >From what I read, there is no easy way to make a bootable disk from a
> hard drive that I know of.  You need to make a backup diskette to
> diskette.  Because of this, SuperDisk software and SuperZap utilities
> were sold to make these kinds of tasks practical.
>
> https://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/
> https://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/Su4cmd.zip
>
> Bill