Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site

TRS-80 Disk and Tape Conversion Utilities

by Ira @ 12:50 pm on February 20, 2009.

TRS-80 Disk and Tape Conversion Utilities

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Reading/Writing TRS-80 Disk Media on an IBM
If you have a 5.25″ drive hooked up to your IBM PC, the following programs can be used to read TRS-80 disks into the DMK/DSK format. If you want to read Model 1/3/4 disks and have a Catweasel card, use Tim Mann’s CW2DMK utility. If you want to read Model 1/3/4 disks and do not have a Catweasel card, use Matt Read’s READDISK utility. If you want to read COCO disks, use Jeff Vavasour’s RETRIEVE utility.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	Catweasel Utilities	v4.4	January 15, 2010	Tim Mann	Home Site
	Utilizes special hardware called a Catweasel card to read all formats of TRS-80 disks on a PC. Also includes a utility of general use for converting DMK format disks to DSK format.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	READDISK	v2.1	July 3, 2007	Matthew Reed	Home Site Documentation
	READDISK transfers files from a TRS-80 Diskette to an IBM .DSK file without special equipment. This version can also read Tandy 1000 disks. READDISK is an MS-DOS program that will run on an IBM PC compatible computer. Obviously, the PC must have the proper size disk drive. (In other words, to read 5 1/4″ TRS-80 disks, your PC must have a 5 1/4″ disk drive.) READDISK will not work under Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Please note that not all PC disk controllers are capable of reading TRS-80 disks. This is a limitation of the disk controller, not READDISK. If you have trouble, try running READDISK on other PC’s until you find one that can read your disks. Remember, you only need to read your TRS-80 disks once to convert them to disk images, so be sure to use the “Retry” command heavily.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	GETDISK and PUTDISK	N/A	June 28, 1994 (NOT A TYPO)	Jeff Vavasour	Home Site
	The TRS-80 Model 4 Emulator’s virtual disk utilities have been provided free for download in order to allow you to determine whether your PC has the features necessary to read and write TRS-80 floppies directly. The emulator can either access your TRS-80 floppies directly in its floppy drive, or as images copied to your hard drive. Either way, you need to be able to determine whether the PC hardware can read the floppies.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	Retrieve	v1.3	December 10, 2000	Jeff Vavasour	Home Site
	To transfer files from a COCO Diskette to a .DSK image.
The following programs are over a decade old and regardless of whether or not they even work, the above are much better choices at this point in time.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	PC Cross Zap	N/A v1.0c v1.0h	July 7, 1990 August 24, 1998 January 23, 1987	Michael J. Gingell – Hypersoft	N/A
	Reading, writing, editing and formatting TRS-80 disks on a PC.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
TRS-80	Hypercross	v3.0a	December 31, 1987	Michael J. Gingell – Hypersoft	N/A
	Reading, writing and formatting PC and CP/M disks on TRS80 models I, III and IV.
Platform	Utility Name	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
DOS	TRS Cross	v1.3	March 20, 1990 August 25, 1986	Powersoft	N/A
Platform	Description	Version	Date	Author	Home Site
TRS-80	Transfer		January 5, 1999	Timothy Purves
	Transfer runs on a TRS-80 and will read/write to IBM PC Formatted 5.25″ disks.

Reading/Writing TRS-80 Cassette Media on an IBM

Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site DOS CAS to WAV Utility N/A November 7, 2004 Knut Roll-Lund Home Site Will convert a CAS file into a WAV for making a real TRS-80 cassette. Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site DOS WAV to CAS Utility v2.0.0.2 (Bug Fix 2) February 4, 2008 Knut Roll-Lund Home Site Wav2cas is a Windows program, run in a DOS window (or you can use drag’n'drop, dropping the wav file onto the wav2cas desktop shortcut icon), which takes an uncompressed Windows wav file (made from a Model I Level II (500 Baud), Model I Level 1 (250 baud), or Model III (1500 Baud) cassette tapes) and generates a cas file for use by TRS-80 emulators. Silent bits doesn’t matter, so an entire tape can be converted (but header synchronization is only done once, so this is risky). Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site DOS High/Low Cassette Converter None April 28, 2005 Knut Roll-Lund Home Site Highlow is a small utility for converting CAS files between Highspeed (1500 Baud) and Lowspeed (500 Baud). Since 1500 Baud includes a startbit, making the file contents unreadbale, it is useful for viewing the contents of a highspeed CAS file after a wav2cas_h conversion, to do a preliminary check for success or to get the name from a system tape. It can convert both ways and does so automatically. It can’t handle multiple files in a CAS file so only single content CAS files may be used, and it must detect the header so it can’t deal with fragments. Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site DOS ACAS CAS Analyzer None Knut Roll-Lund Home Site ACAS is another small utility, this time for checking the cas files. Actually it is a beta as it will be incorporated in another program but I decided that I would release this standalone version anyway. As it is now it will scan through a cas file and find out what it can about it and output what it thinks to a txt file with the same path and name. ACAS will read model I and III type of CAS files, it will attempt to decode the first program it finds, if there are data after what it perceives as a program these will be listed as hexcodes. For highspeed it will check that the startbit is ok. It does SYSTEM tapes, reporting the blocks, does the checksum, looks for gaps. It does BASIC, listing the program detokenizing all except what is in quotes or behind a REM, checks the embedded addresses, reports any codes in quotes or behind REM. Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site Windows CMD2CAS N/A March 3, 2005 Attila Grósz Home Site Will convert a /CMD file into a WAV for making a real TRS-80 cassette.

Outputting CAS Files

Platform         Utility Name     Version   Date         Author       Home Site Windows Play CAS Utility 1.0 March 25, 2008 Knut Roll-Lund Home Site Use your PC as a cassette player for your TRS-80 Model I/III/4 Level I and II by connecting your TRS-80 cassette input (“Ear” Output) into the PC’s headphones output. Supports Level 1 (250 Baud), Level II (500 Baud), and Highspeed (1500 Baud) and SYSTEM, BASIC, EDTASM, LEVEL 1 SYSTEM, and LEVEL 1 BASIC files. It does NOT support Scripsit, or ASCII files.

Utilities

Platform   Description   Version   Date   Author   Home Site DOS Binary BASIC to ASCII BASIC Converter   September 24, 1998 George Phillips   Platform   Description   Version   Date   Author   Home Site DOS TRS-80 to IBM-PC Conversion Program v3.0 v3.0 April 25, 1998 Dave McCoy (v2.0) and Bruce Goldman (v3.0)   IBM DOS program to reformat TRS-80 Basic Code

One Response to “TRS-80 Disk and Tape Conversion Utilities”

1. Charles E. Higgins says:

   November 25, 2011 at 7:04 pm

   One issue in modern PC’s is the use of USB for disk interfaces. There are NO 5 1/4″ disk drives with USB interfaces! I have one PC with a 5 1/4″ drive. It is an old XT class machine with a 4.77MHz 8088 and 8087 coprocessor so the emulator is not recommended for it. Last I heard it required a 100MHz pentium class machine. What is needed for those of us with working TRS-80′s is for Tandy to waive its copyrights and allow us to get what we need for these machines that we have loyally used. If you followed me (HigginsCharles) on twitter you’d know my brother bet me my TRS-80 would not work after it spent 9 years in non climate controlled storage. This afternoon I got bored and hooked up my TRS-80 W/4 180 KB drives, stereo sound system and monophonic sound system up and saw if it would work. It did. Amazing reliability. I even played music (Orch90) through its stereo amp and speakers. And yes the old disks are still readable.

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