[Coco] Have no idea what to call it, but, it WAS New tool: WIRED

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 04 December 2012 15:16:36 Luis Antoniosi did opine:

> When you run the HDBDOSC3.BIN or use a DW ROM you can only access DW
> virtual drives or the FLOPPY using either DRIVE OFF (0-4)

Is this not 0-3, like hdb-dos?

> or a
> specific DRIVE OFF 0 to make only drive 0 as floppy. You can backup
> from DW to the floppy this way using BACKUP 4 TO 0 for instance, you
> need to attach a disk image to DW server drive 4  first. But there is
> no way to backup from DW to one of your virtual drives in RGB/HDB DOS
> hard disks. You would need to backup to floppy and then reboot in
> RGB/HDB dos and backup from floppy to the hard disk again what is a
> daunting task. And also wears out you old diskettes too.

Not to mention the fdc in your "pc" _must_ support 256 byte sectored disks.  
Mine does not, either logging a several page long Ooops and a crash 
shortly, or outright locking up the machine.  Until the advent of dw, I was 
sending stuff back and forth using nitros9 and rzsz on the coco working 
against a minicom (VT-0102) terminal here.

As you can well imagine, that sets some pretty big sawhorses in that high 
hurdle track.  I find I must restrict the linux zmodem to 256 byte 
transmission windows due to a near total lack of properly setting up the 7 
wire protocol on the coco with todays modern serial driver, which did work 
perfectly 15 years ago using sacia for a driver and which could, using the 
same rzsz-3.36 I built for us all those years ago, make around 740 cps, 100 
cps faster in those days, so now the maximum transfer speed on a sustained 
basis is about 635 cps either way.  Obviously a full 80 track ds image 
takes nearly an hour to move it to the coco under those limitations.  
Drivewire is about half the speed of a floppy, but its many times faster 
than that.  I maybe could build a new version yet, but Chuck re-arranged 
his web page and licensing so that we can no longer download the src code 
free.  I did some code optimizations to 3.36, gaining about 250 cps over 
Chucks version but I'm sure by now that he also is using the table lookup 
crc calculation method.  The 6x09's do not have a barrel shifter for bit 
twiddling, forcing the 6x09's to do very laborious bit at a time shift 
loops, excruciatingly slow when all you really need is a tfr a,b clra for 
an 8 bit shift right, or a tfr b,a; clrb, for an 8 bit left shift.

So this too, will be a valuable tool, thank you Luis.

> What WIRED does is it enables raw access to the RGB/HDB DOS drive
> under the hood. So it can backup straight from DW to RGB/HDB dos. And
> is pretty fast cause is entirely in ML. The only requirement for WIRED
> is to run it using the RGB/HDB dos ROM. It needs the ROM to access the
> hard drive.
> 
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 04 December 2012 13:37:27 Luis Antoniosi did opine:
> >> Yes, You you should boot from your RGB-DOS mode and run it from a
> >> virtual drive. Then run"wired".
> >> 
> >> Your DW4 server must be in HDB-DOS emulation mode maybe ?
> > 
> > Confirmed, it must be checked on
> > 
> >> I could make it to work with HDB-DOS and DISK BASIC 2.1 but I don't
> >> have RGB-DOS to test it.
> >> 
> >> Try  runm"HDBDOSC3.BIN" it will boot in DW C3 mode. Check if you can
> >> access your DW this way doing a DIR 0 for instance.
> > 
> > And that works.  One last question, understanding that my rsdos
> > experience is limited since I've been running os9 since '85 or so,
> > where do the switches take place between dw access and hdb-dos
> > access, the usual drive3 is still dw, but drive4 is then an hdb-dos
> > vdisk/file from the hard drive?
> > 
> > It may be that when I ran wired.bas, I did get the proper response but
> > did not have dw's server set for hdb-dos translation mode.  It needs
> > a page of docs to explain some of these "gotchas'. ;)
> > 
> > However, once explained, it seems to work, and will certainly be a
> > valuable tool in our toolbox.
> > 
> > Thank you very much Luis.
> > 
> > Cheers, Gene
> > --
> > 
> > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> >  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> > 
> > -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> > My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up!
> > I was taught to respect my elders, but its getting
> > harder and harder to find any...
> > 
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco


Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up!
The help people need most urgently is help in admitting that they need 
help.
I was taught to respect my elders, but its getting 
harder and harder to find any...