[Coco] Questions about drivewire3/hdbdos

[Robert Hermanek]

A little off this subject, but maybe of interest to the makers of the DW4 
server:  When I wrote my own (somewhat crude) DW server, I decided on an 
option of a shared drive.  So if I refer to the DRIVE #n command as choosing 
between "devices" 0 to 255, and the DRIVE n command selecting virtual 
floppies on said device, I then made an option where I could choose an 
arbirary disk number, such as 255, to reserve as a shared disk.  What this 
meant then was that regardless of what DRIVE # command you used, the shared 
disk always returned the same DSK image.  So you could do this:

If "DRIVE 255" was shared, you could issue these commands:

DRIVE #1
BACKUP 10 to 255  (copies device #1, disk 10 to shared disk 255)

DRIVE #2
BACKUP 255 to 3 (copies shared disk 255 to device #2, disk 3)

This allowed me to easily swap disk images between device #'s without 
worrying about ramdisk/etc, also was very handy as a general purpose "temp" 
disk...

(And for all I know DW4 already has a feature like this, I have downloaded 
it and installed, it, but have not had time to look at it in depth yet... 
very nice though!)

-Robert

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Gault" <robert.gault at att.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Questions about drivewire3/hdbdos


> Bill wrote:
>> Well, I thought I had it figured out.
>>
>> When I type DRIVE #1, it accesses the #1 drive. When I type DIR, I get a
>> directory. But how do I load files into DRIVE #1, dir 1 or dir 2 or dir 
>> 3?
>>
>> (does that make sense?)
>>
>
> Not really :)
>
> Bill, don't get confused between Drivewire3 and Drivewire4.
> The first program assumes that each of the four slots is the equivalent of 
> a drive mounted on a scsi channel. There is no built-in HDBDOS command 
> that permits (under Disk Basic) copying between channels/slots. The only 
> way that can be done is to move files into memory, issue a DRIVE#n to 
> change channels, and then SAVE or SAVEM to the new disk.
> The second program, has the feature HDBDOS Translation. This feature 
> permits emulating Drivewire3 (Translation=OFF) or having each DW slot 
> 0-255 the equivalent of the "drives" on a HDBDOS formatted hard drive.
>
> Let's look at some examples which might make this easier to follow.
> 1) Moving files between a real disk in a Coco drive0 and a Drivewire image 
> in slot0 by loading them into memory and then saving them.
>    You access the real disk with DRIVEOFF and any commands to access 
> drive0. You access the DW disk with DRIVEON and any commands to access 
> drive0. This works with both DW3 and DW4.
> 2) Copying files between two drives mounted in different DW slots.
>    Issue DRIVE#n to select the drive. Load a file into memory. Issue 
> DRIVE#m to select the other drive. Save the file. This works for both DW3 
> and DW4.
> 3) Moving files when they can't easily be stored in memory, ex. machine 
> language files. This applies to both 1) and 2) above.
>    You can get the RAMdisk program from the Drivewire site. This program 
> makes drive3 a RAM disk which is active whether the floppies are on or 
> off. The program can be stored on either a real disk or a DW image.
>    LOADM"RAMDISK" or whatever name it is saved as. Issue DRIVEON and 
> DSKINI3 to format the RAM disk. Use DRIVEON or DRIVEOFF to activate either 
> floppies or DW disks. Use either BACKUP0TO3 or COPY"file.ext:0"TO3 and 
> then after an appropriate DRIVEON or DRIVEOFF go from 3 to 0. This works 
> with both DW3 and DW4.
>
> 4) Moving files between DW disks.
>    If you don't want to use the method in 3) you must use Drivewire4.
>    Mount several images (single disks not hard drives) in the Drivewire 
> slots. Turn on HDBDOS Translation and issue DRIVEON. Now you can transfer 
> files between any of the drives with COPY or BACKUP.
>
> =======================
> If you are not sure what you want to accomplish or can't describe it, the 
> above will seem confusing. It will not be when you can clearly state 
> exactly what you want to do, step by step.
> If nothing else, if you want a step by step answer to a question, you must 
> present a step by step question. :)
>
>
>
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