[Coco] Help wanted

[Aaron Wolfe]

Thanks.  If it weren't for the work you did on the original DriveWire
from Cloud9, I doubt I would even be part of the CoCo community today.
 The fact that it was available, easy to use and free is a big part of
what got me back into the CoCo.  I still to this day have never owned
a real floppy drive, so DW opened up a whole world of things that I
had spent many hours reading about and wishing for as a kid :)

I do appreciate the kudos, that wasn't the goal of my post.  There are
some features that folks have asked about (and that I think are really
cool) but that are just outside my technical grasp for now.  For
instance.. adding virtual channel support to BASIC.   We could easily
make it possible to write a web server, a web client, real networked
games.. all sort of internet stuff right in good old DECB.  Even
something as simple as using web pages as the output for a BASIC
program instead of the CoCo screen in an otherwise normal program
could be useful.
The server has the functionality, the DW ROM has the I/O routines, all
that is missing are a couple BASIC commands to send and receive the
strings.  And yet I've been beating my head against how to exactly do
that for several days.  I know it can be done, even have some idea of
how to do it, but it's just so far outside of what I have experience
with that things are moving at a glacial pace.

I'm really just hoping that some of the experts here will check the
"Help Wanted" page next time they are bored and looking for something
to do.

-Aaron


On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 7:31 PM, Boisy G. Pitre <boisy at tee-boy.com> wrote:
> Aaron,
>
> I applaud your efforts and the quality of the product.  You did it without gain or profit, and that is also to be applauded.
>
> DriveWire has been and continues to be the community standard for diskless, PC-connected storage for the CoCo, and you've taken it farther than I originally envisioned.  Congratulations.
> --
> Boisy G. Pitre
> http://www.tee-boy.com/
>
> On Apr 25, 2011, at 6:17 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>
>> As I am wrapping up DriveWire version 4, I keep thinking about all the
>> great suggestions and ideas that people have shared with me.
>> I'd love to see some of them come to be in the next version of
>> DriveWire.  I could sure use a hand to make some of these thing happen
>> though.
>>
>> I've listed what I think are the most interesting ideas for going
>> forward.  Most of these features are held up by my lack of skill on
>> the CoCo.  Only a couple require any work on the server side (and
>> trust me, if anyone does the CoCo side work, I will get any server
>> side stuff done one way or another :)
>>
>> If you know the ins and outs of the BASIC ROMs, assembly, OS9..  There
>> are ideas lacking skill waiting for you here:
>>
>> https://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/home/helpwanted
>>
>> This is not an authoritative list, all ideas are welcome.  Current and
>> future DriveWire is 100% GPL open source code, it belongs to the
>> community and all input is welcome.  I've never asked for anything in
>> return for the hundreds of hours I've put into dw4, because frankly
>> I've enjoyed doing it and probably would have done it for myself
>> anyway :).  However, I am asking for some help going forward.  There
>> are so many great things we could do and I feel like my own lack of
>> skill on the CoCo side is the biggest impediment most of the time.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>> --
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>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
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