[Coco] a not very important Drivewire question

[Aaron Wolfe]

256 (or 255 due to HDBDOS range check) files each containing 256 disk
images has been possible since the first release of DW4 some years
ago, and even DW3 allows 4 files with 256 disks each for 1024 online
at once.  I don't think anyone really uses it that way though.  Few
people have 256 total disks that they actually use.

For archival and storage, its much more convenient to treat individual
disks as individual files.  This way you can organize them any way
you'd like in folders, give them descriptive file names, store
documentation along with the disk images, easily share them with
others, etc, etc and never have to worry about which of 256 slots any
particular thing is in.  As you mentioned, it would be an
organizational nightmare to keep track of things if your disks were
stored that way.



On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 12:13 AM, Kip Koon <computerdoc at sc.rr.com> wrote:
> Hi Guys!
> I just modified my local copy of the HDB-DOS source code and reassembled
> HDB-DOS and now I can execute the HDB-DOS command "DRIVE#255" successfully
> in Drivewire.  I think I'll reburn all my HDB-DOS eproms with this change
> included though I have no idea what I'd use 256x256 virtual floppy drives
> for!?!  65536 Floppy drives online is quite an accomplishment for our little
> Color Computer.  Can we actually have that many vhd files online in
> Drivewire?  I think I'm going to find out.  Now for someone to write a
> program to dynamically access all those drives to display their directories,
> copy files between them and catalog all those disks.  Hummm...  a disk based
> disk cataloging program of some sort ought to do the trick.  Can't hold all
> that information in memory I would think.
> Wow!  If one needs 256 drive busses then it's now possible.  I think I would
> go nuts trying to keep up with 256 Drive busses of 256 HDB-DOS ECB 35 track
> SSDD virtual drives.  Has anyone actually done this successfully?  I'd like
> to see if this is even possible.  It would make for an interesting video -
> wouldn't it.
>
> Kip Koon
> computerdoc at sc.rr.com
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon
> http://computerpcdoc.com/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Robert Gault
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2014 8:14 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] a not very important drivewire question
>
> Robert Hermanek wrote:
>> I don't suppose anybody has a text file with the assembler output of
>> HDB-DOS 1.1D DW3 COCO 3, so I could find the address of that #MAXDN-1
>> below and poke a
>> 255 in there instead...
>>
>> On 7/16/2014 9:46 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
>>> * Select Device ID number
>>> DNUM           jsr       <$9F                Parse over "#"
>>> DSET05         jsr       LB70B               Evaluate argument
>>>                cmpb      #MAXDN-1            Legal?
>>>                bhi       FCERR               No, ?FC ERROR
>>
>>
>
> There is only one $C1FE (aka CMPB #254) in the hdbdw3cc3.rom and that is at
> $1CAA in the file. This ought to be correct as just before that is a $BD
> B70B which would be the JSR $B70B.
>
> Robert
>
> PS. I did compile HDBDOS with maxdn=256 and it works for a DW4 slot of 255.
>
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