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

[Charlie Pelosi]

No, I play DECB games daily. Honestly, for most if my life. :)
I never used DW so much because I really don't like the highspeed mode of the coco3.

Seriously it is a pain to poke normal speed before exec all the time. For this reason I started using a coco2, and now a coco1.

I'd like a DW HDB-DOS for coco3 that ran at coco2 speed with no high speed mode. It's more than fast enough for working with DECB games.

Nitros9 is a fantastic OS that shows off that coco power. But if there is a game for I'm glad they all come with self booting images ::)

-----Original Message-----

From: Luis Antoniosi
Sent: 5 Dec 2012 15:09:03 GMT
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Have no idea what to call it, but, it WAS New tool: WIRED

Brian, I am on very same position as you: family, kids, house, car,
dog, cat and bird. When I got the SuperIDE my first move was: to copy
DECB disks into it and I found out it was nearly impossible.

First the Aaron's tool Sidewalk was broken. For this reason I made a
small command line tool to put and get disk from the CF card using the
PC. After a month, Aaron fixed his tool. The Sidewalk is great because
it has the GUI to browse all image but it still gets a lot of time to
read all the disks so I still use my command line tool which take a
second to write or get a disk on it.

The stock NitroOS-9 on superIDE does not access the RS-DOS drive (the
IH). Nor it has support for any of the sierra or VDG games. So I had
to learn a lot until I got a working copy of the nitros and manage to
solve the problem with the rbsuper descriptors. That was a lot of
learning curve. I do not have much time available on real hardware so
it took a lot of time for me. Even when I got the /IH working I found
out the pain it was copying from DW to it. Again I need to make a
BASIC09 tool for it. Also I had to figure out how to install a fresh
nitrOS-9 on a superIDE without a MPI.

This what motivated me to make the WIRED tool. The Sidekick I did
because I was sick of typing commands and the coco basic doesn't like
typos, you made one you're screwed. Other BASIC like C-64 or even MSX
they have a free screen cursor, you can just return the cursor there
and fix it. But no my Coco. (hmmmm this gives me an idea!)

But then I realized: why nobody else did it before ? Maybe nobody
plays DECB games anymore ? Does everybody else use nitrOS-9 only ?

I just love DECB and all its games. I also love the 32 column screen.
I don't like using the 80 column display doesn't look like a coco for
me :P

Felipe.


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Brian Blake <random.rodder at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/2012 4:43 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
>>
>>
>> Luis Antoniosi has demonstrated one approach which can handle Drivewire
>> plus one type of HDBDOS; one ROM loaded to RAM, the second the current ROM.
>> Extend it to a 16K ROM with the main package in the first half and hardware
>> specific routines in the second half, and there just might be room to
>> support all flavors of drives.
>>
>> Aside from the difficulties and work needed to attempt this, the
>> requirement of a 16K ROM may make the concept Coco3 only. That would not be
>> desirable.
>
>
> I'd fully agree that you'd want to support all CoCo models - however, WHY
> would the move to a 16k ROM be CoCo3 only? Roger claimed CoCoNet would work
> an any CoCo and I believe it's on a 16k ROM. I've only used it on a CoCo 3
> so I don't know.
>
> Not trying to be difficult, just want to understand...
>
>>
>> As things stand right now, the point is moot for NitrOS-9 as you can have
>> driver packages for any type hard drive and Drivewire co-existing in
>> OS9Boot. I have this currently going for my SCSI drives and Drivewire.
>
>
> Not everybody works in or wants to work in NitrOS-9. And really, there's
> quite a few people who have no clue how to set this stuff up under NitrOS-9
> - myself included.
>
>
>> So this Super HDBDOS really is needed only for Disk Basic. Far as that
>> goes, it is only needed to transfer files back and forth as Luis' Wired does
>> right now.
>>
>> Robert
>
>
> Maybe I'm the only person who sees the utility in having your DOS be able to
> see and access all the storage devices on the CoCo system, I don't know. For
> those who like to play their RS-DOS based games, I'd think being able to
> copy files from your PC to help set up your SuperIDE in the easiest way
> possible would be a benefit. I know NitrOS-9 is powerful and can do lots of
> things RS-DOS cannot.
>
> However, with three kids and a grand-daughter, working full time, and a
> house and cars to maintain, I personally do not have the time to learn how
> to set up a NitrOS-9 boot disk, decide what modules to add to it, learn all
> the methods of scripting and customization, etc... Yes, I'd LOVE to learn
> these things, as well as learn to write BASIC programs better and learn
> Assembly language as well. Right now, Disk Basic suits my needs.
>
> Now, I'm not saying one person's needs outweighs the needs of the many - if
> I'm indeed the only person to see a need or the usefulness of these changes,
> then I probably should shut up. But, I'd imagine for people coming back to
> the CoCo, or those who have a new-found interest for whatever reason, the
> first thing they are likely to see is a Disk Basic based OS like HDB-DOS or
> CoCoNet if they dive in and get a SuperIDE for a storage solution or the
> DrivePak if the new 'owner' follows through with his promises. These changes
> would probably be greatly beneficial to these people - especially if Disk
> Basic is what they've used in the past.
>
>
> Brian
>
>
>
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