[Coco] Drivewire VHD's

Sun Apr 15 21:27:28 EDT 2012

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I agree... to a certain extent. As of now, I know of at least 4 good sites that have most anything you want as far as Coco software... all on individual disks, as well as disks (d0.dsk, d1.dsk ext) full of "stuff". I personally (over several years) have downloaded these FTPs and repositories in thier entirity. For the most part they have become a jumbled up mess. They may have started with some orginization but once they got overwhelmed with "Newly Recieved" items... the organizers couldn't keep up with flow of disks.... a lot of which are zipped and no way to catagorize them without downloading, unzipping, sorting and the re-uploading. I have spent the past three years going through the 8 gigs of stuff I've downloaded, sorting through duplicates, non Coco stuff, and useless HTML files and ended up (so far) with about 4 gig of Coco software. Some programs have at least 20 different copies in the same FTP.
>

This is absolutely a problem, one that vexes me quite often, but it's
one that is easy to fix with the right tool(s).  The DW4 library
manager sorts through your disk images down to the file level and can
find dups in disk image or individual files, can search filenames and
file content (strings or tokens in a BASIC program, etc).  It knows
how to look at files inside zip or lzh archives and might learn about
ar, pak and others eventually. It knows how to see DECB files inside
RSDOS disks, sort of knows how to see inside OS9 RBF filesystems (this
is a work in progress, will be completed before release).   In other
words, just turn it loose on that nasty mess of disks, zips, and
individual files I think we pretty much all have created somewhere on
our hard drives and it turns it into something that can be sorted by
various criteria, deduplicated, searched, etc.

> What I am trying to acomplish is ONE source for the most populer retail software... RSDOS and OS9. The VHDs will be labled as to thier "theme" (Apps, Utils, ext..) as well as thier OS (... RSDOS, OS9.. ect). On RSDOS VHDs, the first disk will contain a text file with all contents, drive no. ect as well as a Findfile program that searches ALL 256 drives for a given string... "RUN"FINDFILE"<ENTER>... "File to find? ["TW128"<ENTER>]. No programs piled all on one disk. most will be duplicates of the original retail disk or as close as I can get to it. There will also be an organized library of PDF manuals to match the software (when available). That has probably been one of the biggest things.... the manuals have been in several places and the software in others. And yes I do have a collection of individual disks... matched with manuals when I could find them. As I said... that's already there.... if you want to wade through the DIRs and find them. Don't get me wrong... I applaud
>  all those who have contributed through the years. We now have resources to about anything Coco... only a few things missing and they are probably out there if we search a little harder.
>
> OS9 VHD disks are easy... just create a directory for each software package and copy it.
>
> These disks are not for the searching with the PC or linking to the site.. they are for the CoCo, Drivewire and HDBDOS (or VCC and RGBDOS). They are not particurly for running, but an Archive. They will be layed out in a way as to make searching them with a Coco, a breeze. Also will be included, complete directions for mounting and running. As most RSDOS software has to be run on individual disks anyway.
>

This all sounds great, except for the part where this nicely organized
collection gets stuffed into what is essentially a weird and limited
file archive (aka a big vhd).  What does putting these disk images
into a VHD gain one over just putting them into a zip file?  In a zip
you could have things organized by a directory structure, include the
PDF manual or other supporting files right there with the .DSK image
in the same directory, and would not be limited to 256 arbitrary
slots.  A web page would offer even more functionality.

> For those who don't like BIG disks full of stuff? Don't download them... as I said, the individuals are there for the searching... I found them.
>

Sure..  I think you have a good idea here, I just question the final
delivery mechanism.  I suppose it would be possible to take the VHDs,
split them back into individual disks, and organize them as desired,
so will be useful regardless.

> Try...
> ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/ (need reworking something awful)
> http://www.thecocolounge.com/index.htm (nice game selection, but in zips)
> http://goyim.dyndns.org:8080/coco/ (pretty organized)
> https://sites.google.com/a/aaronwolfe.com/cococoding/home/docs (good source for OS and programming manuals)
> ftp://www.rtsi.com/ (for some reason RTSI has been passworded)(mostly individual files, not disks)
>
> And that's just the main ones.
> I hope to start uploading the ORGANIZED VHDs within a couple of weeks along with a manual package for each VHD
>
> "To each his own" said the old woman as she kissed the cow....
>
> Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Bill Pierce
> ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Sun, Apr 15, 2012 4:14 pm
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Drivewire VHD's
>
>
> Maybe I am the odd man out, but I find these massive collections of
> undreds of disks into a single file very inconvenient.  No matter how
> ood a job the indexer/organizer does of documenting the contents (and
> ften it's not a very good job at all) you still end up having to
> earch through the thing to really figure out what is what.  Then you
> ave the challenge of bringing the one or two things you want out of
> his monster image into your actual working environment, which
> epending on your setup can be non trivial.
> To me, it would serve much better to keep each disk (or each program
> t least, in the case of a software that uses multiple disks)
> eparate.  That's not to say you couldn't still organize things, but
> ackaging the actual disks together into a big image containing lots
> f different software doesn't seem like a good technique.  Using
> imple directories or better yet web pages describing the content
> ould be more useful.
> Curtis Boyle's CoCo games page is a great example of "doing it right"
> MHO:  http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/coco_game_list.html
> ons of great software along with a very nicely done organization,
> creenshots documentation and history.  Not to say every software
> ollection would or could be that well put together, just an example
> f a site I find very handy.
> DW4 has lots of tools for dynamically bringing in individuals disk
> mages or even individual files from nearly any source (local disk/web
> ite/ftp/etc) with just a click or two.  For instance, you can browse
> urtis Boyle's games webpage right in DW4 and a single click on any of
> he disk images there mounts them ready to play on your CoCo.   The
> pcoming version 4.1 has a built in library manager that works sort of
> ike iTunes or other content managers.  It makes organizing your
> oftware library and finding new software from the internet very
> imple.
> Just my $0.02.
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  I may be posting something sililar to what you are referring to on my website
> below) soon. I have been trying to organize different VHDs into "themes" Games,
> pps, Programming, Music ect... If it turns out like I want, I will be linking
> hem on DaBarnStudio site to share with others. I know how hard it is to gather
> ll the stuff together and I've been at it (downloading) for awhile and have
> athered most of everything that's out there. The biggest problem is it seems
> very program (especially pre-"/DD" days) has it's own agenda as to where
> upport files should be. Some can be patched, some already have patches, some
> ust "run" like they should. Then there's the bootfiles...It seems like half the
> oftware requires something special in it's boot... VRN, Nil, Midi, VDG, /R0,
> ct... it get's annoying at the least.
>
>  What I'm tryng to do, is to create VHDs with the RSDOS and OS9 themes on the
> ame VHD. RSDOS Vdisk 255 will have the OS9 boot required to run everything on
> he OS9 partition. I'm finding a lot of RSDOS software will not run (or run
> ell) in HDBDOS because of the software using direct access to disk routines and
> ther stuff that was modified. Then you run into the problem of the software
> hard coded" to access drives 0-3. Some can be patched pretty easily for 0-255,
> ome cannot. BUT, having access to the disks, all on one VHD makes it easy to
> opy it to a real disk and run it from standard RSDOS. Basic programs are
> sually the easiest to fix. Just change a few lines of code and it's good to go.
>
>
>  Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>  https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
>  Bill Pierce
>  ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: Mark Ormond <markormond at mtxsystems.com>
>  To: Coco <Coco at maltedmedia.com>
>  Sent: Sat, Apr 14, 2012 1:12 pm
>  Subject: [Coco] Drivewire VHD's
>
>
>  Is there a site with VHD's pre done for Drivewire?
>  'm looking for game collections, etc.
>  Or, is there an easy way to convert the files from a drivepak image to a
> ormat
>  ompatible with drivewire?
>
>  hanks,
>  ater,
>  abone
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