This was a utility program produced by Compusense about 10 years ago designed to read and copy DragonDOS files on a PC. Despite it's limitations (it will only deal with single sided 40 or 80 track disks and has a habit of stripping out '>' and '<' characters so I'm told) it may prove useful to anyone porting material from DragonDOS to PC (for a Dragon/Coco emulator for example). The other sticking point with this program is it was copy protected meaning your original disk had to be in drive A: for it to work. So in order to use the program, an 'original' disk must first be created. This is fairly straightforward and can be achieved as follows:
First, obtain a double density 5.25 or 3.5 disk and format it on a PC. Next, download from my DragonDOS Software page the FORMAT1 utility programs designed to format 1 track of a disk. Load up FORMAT1.BAS on your Dragon, then type:
10 [ENTER] CLEAR 1000,20480 LOAD "FORMAT1.BIN"
From address &H500B onwards, sequentially POKE in the numbers 0,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2. Now insert the PC formatted floppy disk into your Dragon and type RUN. At each prompt enter:
DRIVE NUMBER? [relevent drive number] TRACK TO FORMAT? 1 NO. OF TRKS? 80 SIDE TO FORMAT? 0 PRESERVE EXISTING TRACK DATA? N
The disk will start up and WILL RETURN AN RF ERROR which should be ignored.
Repeat the process: this time POKE in the numbers 0,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3 from address &H500B onwards. Re-run the program and at the TRACK TO FORMAT prompt enter '2'.
Now download from this page the two files CNVBLK.BAS and CNVBLK.DAT which should both be copied onto a DragonDOS disk. Load up the CNVBLK.BAS program - this program assumes the CNVBLK.DAT file will be found on drive 1 and the PC format disk on drive 2. If this is not the case, simply change the filename in line 190 and the drive numbers for the SWRITE command on lines 255 and 305.
When the drives have been assigned correctly, run the program. The CNVBLK file will be correctly copied to the relevent sectors on your modified PC disk.
Finally, download the CONVERT.EXE PC executable, place the modified PC disk in drive A of your PC and type CONVERT. After verifying the 'original' disk the program will allow DragonDOS disks to be successfully accessed in any floppy drive on your PC. The program should be fairly self explanatory to use.