[Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n

[Robert Hermanek]

Yes it is an inherent behavior, meaning if you load up drivewire, it's going 
to be using your rs-232 port for communication.  However, you need to decide 
which version of HDB-DOS to use... for most people, we're talking about 
running it on a coco3, at 115k baud.  If you want a coco 1/2 configuration, 
you need to acquire the older version of HDB-DOS, or find a drivewire disk 
(make a backup!) which contained a "wizard" that allowed you to configure 
what you wanted, I think things like 1) are you using coco 1/2 or a coco 3, 
and 2) do you want to use the high-speed poke...

Maybe as a community we should get a collection of pre-configured HDB-DOS 
loaders set up, for coco 1/2, for coco 3, etc...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chad H" <chadbh74 at hotmail.com>
To: "'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n


> Yea, I would have to keep my 'regular' 160/360k .DSK images separate from
> the DriveWire images I guess.
> But what about telling HDB-DOS to use serial interface for the drive 
> mounts?
> Or is this an inherent behavior of HDB-DOS that doesn't need configuring?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] 
> On
> Behalf Of Robert Hermanek
> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 10:08 AM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: [Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n
>
> When it comes to daily usage, the most initially confusing thing about
> drivewire I think is all this talk of "devices" versus "disks," and
> sometimes other terms are used.  I'm not really sure what the best 
> approach
> is to clarify this, but I'll take a shot at it...
>
> First, it is unfortunate perhaps that we did not choose a different file
> extension for files that are collections of images, as opposed to a single
> image.  If you have a .DSK file that contains a single image, this is what
> you will have (in terms of DECB)
>
> 35 tracks X 18 sectors X 256 bytes per sector = 161,280 bytes, or
> approximately a 160k file.
>
> For the purposes of drivewire however, when you mount a .DSK file as DRIVE
> #0 for example (in the slot for device 0), this .DSK file is actually a
> collection of images, and as I mentioned before, perhaps we should have
> chosen a different file extension such as ".DEV" for "device" or "DWD" for
> drivewire disks (or something.)  Regardless, this file is simple, and is
> just virtual disk images lined up one after another.  The server 
> application
> figures out what offset is necessary to find the right data.
>
> An example:  Let's say you mount file "MyUtils.DSK" in slot 0 on drivewire
> server, and "MyGames.DSK" in slot 1 on drivewire server.  Then the 
> following
> HDB-DOS commands on your coco will perform these functions:
>
> DRIVE #0
>    -- selects MyUtils.DSK
>
> DRIVE 0
>    -- will access first 160k disk, data starting at byte 1 through byte
> 161,280.
>
> DRIVE 1
>    -- will access second disk, data starting at byte 161,281 through byte
> 322,560
>
> DRIVE 2
>    -- will access third disk, data starting at byte 322,561 through byte
> 483,840
>
> To access your games...
>
> DRIVE #1
>    -- selects MyGames.DSK
>
> Now, the DRIVE 0 command mentioned above will not give you access to the
> first disk on your Utils collection, but instead the first disk in your
> Games collection.
>
> In the new Drivewire 4 server applicaiton, it sounds like all these 
> mappings
> can be changed as needed, but for this discussion I'm just assuming that
> DRIVE 0 through DRIVE 255 on the coco are mapped in the same order into a
> corresponding file on the server side.
>
> This is basically all you need to know about drivewire to access data from
> your PC... When I have a little more time, I'll try to list the commands 
> for
> some of the more common things people do with Drivewire.
>
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