[Coco] NitrOS-9 nightly builds, DriveWire4 beta 1.5

[Aaron Wolfe]

It has been an eventful couple of days!  As I mentioned recently, Robert
Gault finished making all the games in the NitrOS-9 CVS build correctly for
DriveWire use.  Today Boisy resurrected the NitrOS-9 nightly build process.
 We added a step that writes all the disk images to the SF web server each
night.

You can get the very latest disk images for NitrOS-9 (and lots of games and
other things) here:  http://www.nitros9.org/latest/

This includes disks for use with all NitrOS-9 supported platforms and in all
supported disk formats.  Every morning at about 3:15AM EST these images are
rebuilt from the current source.

I've also put a new DW4 beta version up at:
http://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/beta

This new version includes many new features:

* Support for multiple CoCos (as many as you have serial ports).  Each can
be bound to it's own network interface if desired.
* All configuration is now merged into a single XML file
* Preliminary support for external user interfaces.  For now you can telnet
to the UI port (default 6800) and issue 'dw' commands, etc.  Soon a
graphical UI will do this for you :)
* 'sendmail' command for sending emails from the CoCo is included
* and.. most interesting to me..  I've preloaded the config with disk sets
for all of the images now found on the NitrOS9 nightly disk web site.

This is the beginning of the online disk directory I've been wanting to put
together for quite some time.  Using the dw command in OS-9 (or via the UI
port) you can list the available disk sets and load the latest build
directly from the web.  You could even set your system to boot off the
nightly NitrOS-9 disk image.

For example, when you type "dw disk set show", you get a list of all the
games and bootable disks available:

{N2|03}/DD:dw disk set show

Available disk sets:

dw4boot-6309          dw4boot-6809          nos9-6309l2
nos9-6309l2-headless  nos9-6809l2           nos9-6809l2-headless
nos9-6809l1-coco1     nos9-6809l1-coco2     mv-6309
mv-6809               blackcauldron         xmas86
flightsim2            goldrush              kingq1
kingq2                kingq3                kingq4
koronis               kyumgai               lslarry
manhunt1              manhunt2              microm
policeq               rof                   spaceq0
spaceq1               spaceq2               aaw-dev


{N2|03}/DD:


Now I can look at the details for a particular set if I'd like:

{N2|03}/DD:dw disk set show lslarry

Details for disk set 'lslarry':

Description: Leisure Suit Larry

X0: http://www.nitros9.org/latest/leisuresuitlarry_dw3.dsk (boot)

{N2|03}/DD:


You can see that this disk set simply uses a URL that points to the latest
disk image.  (A disk set can contain several disks, but this set only needs
one).  I can type "dw disk set load lslarry", press reset, and I'm playing
the game.

I think this is a great way to make CoCo software available.  The maintainer
can put a single disk image on the web or an FTP site, or even a .zip with
several disks in it (DW4 can load disk images directly from inside zip files
on remote servers).  Only one copy to update, etc, and any user can load the
program/boot right from that copy.
With DW, you can save a disk image to a different path than it was loaded
from, so if a user wants their own copy it's as easy as clicking Save As..
(or it will be, at least :)

In the future, these disk sets will be selectable using a pretty GUI that
types all the commands and even takes care of resetting the CoCo for you.
Select a game, press go, and the CoCo starts playing it.

-Aaron