[Coco] DriveWire is just a hobby (Was: DW4 on MAc & Linux)

[Al Hartman]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Tormod Volden
> I would have loved a 10 line FAQ streamlined for my background
> knowledge and experience. But I dived into the existing documentation
> and figured it out over time. I accept that nobody had written a
> concise documentation that exactly suited my purpose. This is complex
> stuff and a lot of stuff. I also did not need to learn everything in
> one evening.

I didn't ask to learn everything in one evening, but how about having what I 
needed to know in the manual you get when you click the "Documentation" link 
on the Cloud9 Website?

I didn't look anywhere else, because I never for the world thought that 
someone would go to the trouble to write a manual, post a link to it, and 
then have the manual not have needed information in it.

Documentation is for end-users with no knowledge, to give them what they 
need.

> It seems like there is the expectation that you can start from scratch
> and learn all this in one hour.

It should be possible to run the software for the first time in a few 
minutes. About the time the guy in the Youtube video ran his. Which is what 
I had to use, since the information wasn't in the documentation I downloaded 
on the page.

> I found many comments here entertaining. Complaints about too little 
> documentation, complaints
> about too much documentation! Some want everything to be as simple as
> in the eighties, when they had one CoCo and one floppy.

Once you know what to do, it IS that easy. Which is why a document of the 
process not existing is even more puzzling.

> At the time they would have to pay half a month salary for anything one 
> tenth as
> complex and useful as what they get for free now.

Um, no. Lantastic was about $79 a copy. I made more than $160.00 a month.

> Today you can buy a ready hdb-dos ROM or floppies and Drivewire cable from 
> cloud-9 for
> pennies if you want to take the fast path. But instead people complain
> that they have to read documentation to make their own.

Who complained about making this stuff?

I bought a ready-made cable. I can burn my own HDB-DOS ROM if I know which 
file in the .zip is the file I should use.

I already have a blank EPROM and a programmer. But notice, it's been several 
days since I asked for help, and still no answer.

It would have been faster to order one. But, I like to do things myself to 
learn new skills. And I bought burners 20 years ago for this purpose.

> Aaron is one of the fewer who can actually make this technology
> work, so I am glad he spends his precious time on that instead of
> writing documentation that other people can write as well.

Except when the person who has the information that needs to be in the 
documentation, is the guy who wrote the code.

I designed the Coco Greeting Card Designer. I wrote the BASIC front end to 
the assembler code that does the hard work. So, I knew what was needed to 
write the manual.

Some manual writer off the street wouldn't have been able to do it without 
first asking a lot of questions and playing with the program for awhile.

You don't write good documentation cold. You need to be knowledgeable about 
what you're writing about.

I can't contribute much right now, as I have only a little bit of the 
necessary knowledge. I need to know a lot more to make a worthwhile 
contribution.

Maybe next week (as I just heard my brother in law is coming to remove a lot 
of stuff stored in my house, and help me build the desks I bought), I can 
give a first pass at a Quick Start Document. But, I'd like to know what all 
the files in the Drivewire.zip are for. Are any to start from a floppy? 
Which ones are for burning to an EPROM?

I can do an RS-DOS side document, and I can at least get from a cold start 
to an OS9 or NitrOS9 prompt, as that seems pretty easy.

But give me a break. I wasn't expecting to go from nothing to an expert in a 
few hours. I was expecting an experience like the chapter in the Coco 
Greeting Card Manual where you went from a cold start o the program to a 
completed greeting card in under 10 minutes.

It takes less than 3 minutes now for me to boot my PC, get the server 
runnning, load the tape file, mount a disk, turn on the Coco 3, enter: 
"CLOADM:EXEC", play the tape file, and get to an HDB-DOS prompt. That took 2 
hours the first day. And two hours the day before when I test loaded the 
tape file to determine the volume setting. I was loading the wrong file and 
getting an error, which I thought meant the volume was off. So, I'd reset 
the Coco, switch the screen back to the server, adjust the volume a bit, 
then cue up the file, go back to the Coco, type "CLOADM:EXEC", play the tape 
file, and try again. After over an hour of that, I decided I must be loading 
the wrong file and tried a different one. THEN, it worked with a minor tweak 
of the volume.

A Quick-Start Document would have reduced that to under half an hour the 
first day. Most of the time spent determining the best volume on my sound 
card to get a good load.

Not so much to ask, and when you see the Quick-Start Document, you'll 
understand why it's crazy nobody bothered to write such a simple thing and 
put it in the file you download from the "Document" link on the Cloud9 
Drivewire page.

Just to give you an idea, here's a short section from the Coco Graphics 
Designer manual on setting up your printer:

II.3  INSTALL PRINTER

To install your printer, select this option from the Coco Graphics Designer 
main menu. When you select this option you will first be asked to select 
your printer type from one of the choices presented in the install menu. 
Enter the number which corresponds to your printer and press [ENTER]. If 
your printer is not listed in this menu you may wish to consult your 
printer's manual. Many printers are "Epson-Compatible" and will work the 
same as an Epson RX/FX series printer. If your printer is one of these 
"Epson—Compatible" printers and it doesn't function properly when you select 
l) EPSON RX/FX from the Printer Installation menu, you may wish to try 
selections 3) GEMINI 10X/STAR SG-l0 and 4) PANASONIC 1090/LEGEND 808 before 
you decide that your printer won't work.

You will then be asked to select your baud rate.You will enter a number 
which corresponds to the number you would normally POKE into location 150 
using BASIC to set your baud rate for printing. The menu lists the standard 
values. If you find that a value not listed works better with your printer 
you may enter it instead of the values listed. If you enter the number 0, 
the Coco Graphics Designer will not change the baud rate and use whatever 
baud rate is set when you run it.

The next part of the install program asks you whether your printer requires 
a LINE FEED sent after every CARRIAGE RETURN. Consult your printer's user 
manual to see what your printer
requires.

When you have answered all of these questions, the install program will 
update each of the Coco Graphics Designer programs with this customized 
program module. You only have to use the install function once. Only run it 
again if you wish to change the type of printer you use, or if you wish to 
change your default baud rate.


I didn't have to take very many printer calls. Most of them were, "My 
printer isn't listed... When will you support it?"

-[ Al ]-