[Coco] Drivewire / Coconet ? Is a rs232 pack any faster than the bit banger?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Brian Blake <random.rodder at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aaron,
>
> Not sure about the DRIVE OFF in DW - and my CoCo isn't set up so I can't
> test anything right now.

Todd Wallace helped me verify this yesterday.  I never knew this, but
you can in fact copy files and entire disks between real floppies and
DriveWire disks by using the DRIVE OFF command.  Once entered, drives
0-3 will be your real floppies and drives 4-255 are DW disks.

HDBDOS for DW maps coco drive #s to DW drive #s strangely.  It maps
all requests to DW device 0 and offsets the sector requested by (coco
drive # x 630 sectors).  This means that all requests will come in as
if they were for drive 0, even though you want to use drive 4+.

DW4 has a special mode that maps requests back to the proper drive #
based on the sector, basically the reverse.  This allows you to easily
map files into the proper position for requests from HDBDOS.  To
enable this mode, specify:

<HDBDOSMode>true</HDBDOSMode>

in any <Instance> section of your config file.  Please note that this
mode will cause awfully strange results in NitrOS9.  Of course, in OS9
you can access real floppies and DW disks together very easily in the
standard mode.  Todd is working on a tool for duplicating entire DW
disk images to real floppies.

Hope that helps some folks, I've been asked about copying between real
disks and DW disks several times and never knew a good answer for DECB
users.

-Aaron


>
> And no, the drive flexibility is not exclusive to the the DrivePak - any
> form of CoCoNet can use all types of drives. I mentioned the DrivePak simply
> because I used it more than the 6551 pak, and I think the DrivePak is the
> more versatile of the CoCoNet products.
>
> That's very true about the SuperIDE, but, I'd wager more folks have an MPI
> than a SuperIDE (I fall into that category!!!).
>
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Brian Blake <random.rodder at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > RS-282 pak - I can't answer that question, anybody else?
>> >
>> > There are numerous games and programs in general that will not run
>> without
>> > real floppy hardware due to using their own disk access routines. It
>> sucks,
>> > but, it's a fact...
>> > This is where the flexibility of the DrivePak really shines, as long as
>> you
>> > have an MPI... You can switch between real disk hardware and the virtual
>> > disks with a single command, and without hardware changeover.
>>
>> That is nice, but I don't think its something exclusive to the
>> DrivePak.  It's my understanding that coconet can switch between real
>> disks and bitbanger or serial disks as well.  I think you can do this
>> in DriveWire by issuing the DRIVE OFF command, although I haven't got
>> a FDC here to try it, people have told me this works.  And with the
>> SuperIDE, I can actually switch between DriveWire and Coconet with a
>> single command (and that doesn't even require a multipak!).
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>>
>>
>
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