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fluxengine/doc/disk-eco1.md
2021-05-21 23:34:28 +02:00

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Disk: VDS Eco1
==============
The Eco1 is a Italian CP/M machine produced in 1982. It had 64kB of RAM, in
later models expandable up to 384kB, and _two_ Z80 processors. One of these was
used solely for managing the twin 8" drives, each storing 1.2MB, which was
quite impressive for a CP/M machine in those days. Visually it is best
described as 'very brown'.
<div style="text-align: center">
<a href="vds-eco1.jpg"> <img src="vds-eco1.jpg" style="width:80%" alt="A contemporary advert for the Eco1"/></a>
</div>
Its format is standard IBM scheme, but with an interesting wrinkle: there are
_three_ different formatting zones on the disk:
- Track 0 side 0: 26 sectors, 128 bytes per sector (3296 bytes)
- Track 0 side 1: 26 sectors, 256 bytes per sector (6656 bytes)
- All others: 16 sectors, 512 bytes per sector (8192 bytes)
The standard `read ibm` command will autodetect and read these disks, but due
to the format confusing the size autodetection the images need postprocessing
to be useful, so there's a custom profile for the Eco1 which produces sensible
images.
Reading discs
-------------
Just do:
```
fluxengine read eco1 -o eco1.img
```
You should end up with an `eco1.img` of 1255168 bytes, containing all the
sectors concatenated one after the other in CHS order, with no padding.
References
----------
- [Apulio Retrocomputing's page on the Eco1](https://www.apuliaretrocomputing.it/wordpress/?p=8976)