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

[Bill Pierce]

I only use "VHD" for the multi images and "DSK" for singles. Just as in the emulators.
I was already acustom to the 256 disk thing in basic as a friend of mine had the Ken-Ton hard drive system to which this is all based. I used his system quite a bit as I didn't have Delphi access and he did. 
The multi disk files are easier to create and manipulate in Vcc then used on the Coco. I use the original VHDs that Robert Gualt created for Vcc and Mess as my base files. You can format the OS9 portion to clear it in Vcc in less than a minute (80 meg). These images have plenty of room for OS9 archives.
And if you follow Mr Gault's instructions for setting up an OS9 boot in Vcc, the Coco OS9 boot becomes effortless.
I used the cassette cable direct to PC method for loading HDBDOS the first time, then saved it to disk. Now I turn on the Coco then run the DW server on the PC, then I load and exec HDBDOS on the Coco, the boot menu comes up, hit "5" for OS9, "6" for RSDOS.
One thing that I've noticed. If you have a VHD partitioned for RSDOS (pokes for the $5A000 offset), HDBDOS will not read the single DSK images as it is looking for the $5A000 ofset and the disk is only 180k. This makes copying the single images to the multis rather frustrating. Vcc handles this by 4 single disk drive imulations. On the Coco, the are the real drives.


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: Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com>
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts' <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Fri, Mar 23, 2012 11:45 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
he DriveWire images I guess.
ut what about telling HDB-DOS to use serial interface for the drive mounts?
r is this an inherent behavior of HDB-DOS that doesn't need configuring?
-----Original Message-----
rom: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
ehalf Of Robert Hermanek
ent: Friday, March 23, 2012 10:08 AM
o: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
ubject: [Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n
When it comes to daily usage, the most initially confusing thing about
rivewire I think is all this talk of "devices" versus "disks," and
ometimes other terms are used.  I'm not really sure what the best approach
s to clarify this, but I'll take a shot at it...
First, it is unfortunate perhaps that we did not choose a different file
xtension for files that are collections of images, as opposed to a single
mage.  If you have a .DSK file that contains a single image, this is what
ou will have (in terms of DECB)
35 tracks X 18 sectors X 256 bytes per sector = 161,280 bytes, or
pproximately 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
ollection of images, and as I mentioned before, perhaps we should have
hosen a different file extension such as ".DEV" for "device" or "DWD" for
rivewire disks (or something.)  Regardless, this file is simple, and is
ust virtual disk images lined up one after another.  The server application
igures 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
erver, and "MyGames.DSK" in slot 1 on drivewire server.  Then the following
DB-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
61,280.
DRIVE 1 
   -- will access second disk, data starting at byte 161,281 through byte
22,560
DRIVE 2 
   -- will access third disk, data starting at byte 322,561 through byte
83,840
To access your games...
DRIVE #1
   -- selects MyGames.DSK
Now, the DRIVE 0 command mentioned above will not give you access to the
irst disk on your Utils collection, but instead the first disk in your
ames collection.
In the new Drivewire 4 server applicaiton, it sounds like all these mappings
an be changed as needed, but for this discussion I'm just assuming that
RIVE 0 through DRIVE 255 on the coco are mapped in the same order into a
orresponding file on the server side.
This is basically all you need to know about drivewire to access data from
our PC... When I have a little more time, I'll try to list the commands for
ome of the more common things people do with Drivewire.
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