by AltairClone » January 20th, 2014, 10:59 am
Search the BASIC 1977 manual for "pip utility". It is in Appendix I on page 124. This program was shipped with Disk BASIC to provide a few simple disk utilities. However, the program is really poor and can't begin to live up to the power of it's DEC and CP/M namesake!
The INI command in PIP is probably what you're looking for. Notice, however, it does not copy the boot tracks (0-6) to the new disk (i.e., it doesn't copy BASIC to the new disk). The INI procedure takes 6-7 minutes to init a disk. The copy disk command (COP) can be used to copy an entire disk, but it takes almost 1/2 an hour!
PIP is written in BASIC, so you can easily modify the program to meet your needs.
Third party programs to copy a BASIC disk were available that could copy the entire disk in just a couple of minutes. I can post a BASIC disk with the "TCS Fast Copy" utility on it if you're interested.
These options for disk initialization and copying all assume you want to stay within the constraints of the original environment. If you want to "cheat," you can always copy, load and save disk images between your PC and the Clone.
Mike