[Coco] CoCoNet

[Roger Taylor]

At 07:15 PM 12/27/2008, you wrote:
>Roger, I have to say that this is awesome! Excellent work _ I have a 
>DISTO MC-1 with a 28-pin socket, so this is great!


Just another example:

your PC has a file somewhere, perhaps on the CoCo Archive DVD, called 
J:\cuts.bas
you want your real CoCo to to run cuts.bas

DRIVE 1,"C:\WORKDISK.DSK"   <-- doesn't exist? a blank is created
SAVEW "J:\CUTS.BAS","CUTS.BAS",A
RUN "CUTS"

Notice how the DRIVE and SAVEW command effectively does what imgtool.exe does.

SAVEW will also grab pictures or other binary files from the web, not 
just HTML or text content.  No LF/CR conversion is performed with the 
current build of CoCoNet.  Too much work, too little time.  I'm 
getting to it.  HTML files definately need to be translated to CoCo 
LINE INPUT compatible lines so you can read them like any other 
OPENed ASCII file.  The SAVEW command will translate the files before 
saving them to the desired virtual disk.

So, to summarize:

CoCoNet sends the CoCo remote data and files by placing them on 
mounted virtual disks, meaning the CoCo can process the data in the 
usual manner from BASIC.
Remote files can be from the PC or from the web.

CoCoNet consists of two enhanced Disk BASIC commands:

SAVEW "remote file","cocofile.ext",type  (I might change this to 
SAVEN (network) before releasing.
DRIVE #,"remote pathname"
     in direct prompt mode, DRIVE will list drives 0-3, whether Real 
or Virtual, and mark the default drive

All Disk BASIC commands work with virtual disks as well:
LOAD, SAVE, DIR, DSKI$, DSKO$, DSKINI, etc.
   (subclause: web disks can't be written to)

With these basic functions, a *LOT* can be done now from the 
CoCo.  Append parameters to the SAVEW URL and you're able to 
communicate with a PHP or Perl script, send chunks of data, get an 
unlimited amount of return data (up to the size of a mounted virtual 
disk), and more.

-- 
Roger Taylor

http://www.wordofthedayonline.com