[Coco] VCC2.0.1 and DriveWire

Sun Oct 18 21:19:16 EDT 2015

Barry, what I was referring to about the configuration of the MPI was that I DID include the DLLs already mounted, and they should not have been. In that way, the user could setup VCC in any way they please from the start. I just didn't realize I had included my "vcc.ini" in the zip. VCC will auto create this file once you start it and it keeps it's settings from run to run, so after the user does the first setup to how they want it, it stays that way. I plan on doing a "First Run Tutorial" in the manual as soon as I get chance, and cover all three types of setups (hdbdos, rgbdos, & rsdos). I intended not to even have the MPI mounted as some people like to run just plain FD-502 and nothing else or even cassette... like they did with their Coco 3s.
The stock installation should resemble a "stock" Coco 3 just as you purchased the Coco 3 from Radio Shack... 6809, 128k mem, no overclocking, no MPI, no disk drive.

I too have thought "why not emulate the bitbanger?". Yes, that would be much easier to use "regular" dw across the board, though the Becker Port is still used by the CocoFPGA, so it still needs to be supported in the repo. To be honest,I've run Vcc side by side with my real Coco 3 and the Coco 3 was actually faster on file transfers. Even though Vcc's direct TCP connection should (theoretically) be faster, the bottleneck of converting from serial to TCP (and back) seems to slow it down. This is why, even though I'm running DW4, I use the emudsk driver as well and use /h0 as /dd because it's 10x faster than the dw drives. The native Vcc drive reads/writes "directly" to/from program to disk, so there's no bottleneck. There's actually a default "slowdown" to make it emulate the "slowness" of a real drive. Checking the "Overclock Disk Drives" in "Cartridge/Config FD-502" removes that and the drives are lightning fast.

That was part of the reason for removing the becker port code from VCC and moving it to a rompak. It was originally supposed to "auto-load" the rom when the becker.dll is loaded, but something is screwy there and it doesn't work. So until we figure out what's causing it not to load, we're stuck with doing it by the "External Rom" method. Now, the becker.dll can actually be loaded into Vcc 1.42 and used there.
The emulation of the bitbanger with proper software behind the scenes, could even run a real printer or modem.. just point the converted output to the proper drivers in windows.... It could also open the door to doing MIDI through the bitbanger as well. Once the connection is figured out, just feed it to window's midi drivers. This way, MIDI could be used without DW4. The same could be done to emulate a MIDIPak or an RS-232 pak.

Things like this are being thought of and discussed, but until we get the initial code bug free, we don't want to add anything new and have to deal with 2 (or more) sets of bugs to squash.

Bill Pierce
"Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull

My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
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-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Nelson <barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com>
To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sun, Oct 18, 2015 5:51 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] VCC2.0.1 and DriveWire

Don't change it! Maybe distribute it with a NitrOS9 boot/DECB hard disk setup
for the non DriveWire controller, since that can be hard to find. I run mine
that way most of the time since I don't want to have to startup DriveWire every
time I start VCC. Maybe also include options on the FS502 configuration screen
specifically for HDBDOS like this:

( ) HDB DOS for DriveWire using Becker Port
(hdbdw3bc3.rom file must be present in VCC folder)
( ) Disk Basic (disk11.rom
file must be present in VCC folder)
( ) RGB DOS (rgbdos.rom file must be present
in VCC folder)
( ) Other external ROM image

Also, I know why the setting on the
DriveWire server side is required for the Becker Port, but shouldn't it be
possible to emulate the "bit banger" port so that the standard NitrOS9 drivers
and HDBDOS ROMs would work? I would think today's computers are fast enough to
do that. That way we don't need a different driver for the "Becker"
configuration and could boot the same image on either VCC or a physical CoCo 3.
Alternatively, maybe the ROM and the the NitrOS9 driver could at least
auto-detect which code is needed, so the same software would work on both VCC
and the physical hardware.

> Bill Pierce ooogalapasooo at aol.com 
> Sun Oct 18
15:56:32 EDT 2015
> 
> Pere, just go to "Catridge/FD-502 Conifg" and select
"External Rom" and browse to your hdbdos rom in the the browse box (just as it
states in the Vcc manual). Then reboot (hit F9 twice).
> If I remember
correctly, the ini in the zip file was accidentally left in rgbdos mode.
> This
is the case with the MPI selections as well. They were meant to be left empty,
but I forgot my last testing had left the ini file in the state it's in before I
zipped the dir.
> I should be making a new release soon as Joseph has fixed the
WinXP issues as well as a couple of other things.
> 
> Vcc 201 known bugs:
> 
>
Keyboard will stay in "OS9" (PC keyboard) mode no matter which setting it is
on.
> In Win Vista, F10 does not turn off the status bar in full screen mode,
use <SHIFT>F10 instead. This does not seem to be an issue in any other version
of Windows but Vista
> You "might" experience a mouse bug while in full screen
mode... On some builds, while in a 640 x 192 graphics screen in full screen
mode, the mouse will not travel fulle screen. This bug seems to come and go with
each build so it's been hard to track down what's causing it.
> In the current
release, Vcc will NOT run on WinXP. This issue has been fixed, but has not been
released yet. I'm still waiting on one last bug fix before releasing.
> 
> 
>
The manual in the Zip is for v2.01.. not 1.43. I recently revised the manual
with new info. There never has been a manual for 1.43, only 1.42. There may
still be parts of the manual where I missed changing version numbers as well as
a few other minor spelling and syntax errors, but for the most part, all aspects
of Vcc 2.01 have been added. I actually started a manul for 1.43b, but never
finished and I used parts of that document to make the additions to Joe's
original 1.42 manual, so you may find references to 1.43b that slipped through
the editing.
> 
> Oh, and anytime you're in hdbdos or rgbdos and can't access
the virtual drives 1-3, try typing "DRIVEON" and if you can't access the
floppies, try "DRIVEOFF", and if all else fails... try reading the HDBDOS
manual.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Bill Pierce
> "Charlie stole the handle, and the
train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
>

>  
> 
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for
CocoPedia
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> Global Moderator
for TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer Forums
> http://www.tandycoco.com/forum/
> 
>
E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com

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