[Coco] DriveWire 3

[Boisy Pitre]

On Mar 7, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Joel Ewy wrote:

> Boisy,
>
> First of all, thank you for this generous gift to the CoCo  
> community.  May it drive the sale of many cables and ROM  
> cartridges.  In any case, it should help many existing users to stay  
> in the CoCo game, and aid potential new and returning CoCo users in  
> getting started, which can't be anything but good for all CoCo users  
> and vendors.  We all benefit when more people use the CoCo.
>
> Last night I made up a cable, burned DW3 into a 2764, and popped it  
> into an old Disto Super Controller.  Works like a champ.  I'm using  
> the Windows server for now, but will try out the Linux server and  
> probably also the MacOS one eventually.
>
> A couple questions:
>
> 1.  It appears to me that the only way to transfer files between  
> server disk images in HDB-DOS is through real floppy disks on the  
> CoCo.  E.g.  I want to make a disk image for games and one for image  
> files, etc.  I have individual disk image files on the server.  I  
> can select said files with "drive#[0-3]".  I can automagically  
> expand these disk image files by writing to a virtual drive number  
> >0.  But once I've issued the "drive#" command, the virtual disks in  
> the other image files on the server are inaccessible.  I could do a  
> "drive#0", then "drive off 1" and copy data to a real floppy disk,  
> assuming I have a floppy drive hooked up as drive 1.   Then I could  
> do a "drive#1" command and "drive off 1" again, and then copy the  
> data from the real floppy to a virtual disk on a different image  
> file on the server.
>
> Am I right in thinking that's the only way to do what I'm trying to  
> do in HDB-DOS, or am I missing something?  It would be really cool  
> to be able to do something like:  "backup 254#0 to 5#3" or "copy  
> "hicolor.bin:254#0" to 5#3".

Your approach is correct.  In HDB-DOS, DRIVE X (where 0 <= X <= 255)  
switches to virtual disk X (on the same virtual drive), and DRIVE #Y  
(where 0 <= Y <= 3) switches to virtual drive Y.  There is no command  
like you noted for copying between virtual drives.  This is a  
limitation of HDB-DOS, and I'm not sure if there is room in the  
current ROM to add the # enhancement.  It's something I could look at  
though.

Contrast that to NitrOS-9, which accesses virtual drives 0-3 as /X0-/X3.
>

> Just for fun I tried loading a ramdisk program that installed itself  
> as drives 2 and 3.  I wanted to try using that as an intermediate  
> location for moving files between disk images.  As I expected it  
> stomped on DriveWire.  I haven't tried all of the ramdisk programs I  
> have, but I suspect the result will be the same.
>
> 2.  Some concern has been expressed that since the CoCo 3 version of  
> DW3 runs the CoCo in high-speed mode, some auto-running games might  
> be unplayably fast.  Would a potential solution to this simply be to  
> use the CoCo 2 version and set the server accordingly?  (With the  
> obvious caveat that it would only run at 56k...)

Yes, you could actually use the HDB-DOS CoCo 2 DriveWire ROM and run a  
CoCo 3 at 56K.

One idea is to have a single ROM that could detect a CoCo 3 vs. a CoCo  
2 with one or two PEEKs, but it would have to be a reliable method.

>
> Thanks again for making this available.

You're welcome.

>
> JCE
>
>
>
> Boisy Pitre wrote:
>> As the saying goes, the only way to fight fire is with fire.
>>
>> So starting today, DriveWire 3 is now a free downloadable product  
>> from Cloud-9.
>>
>> You can go to our website at http://www.cloud9tech.com/ and click  
>> on the DriveWire announcement on the main page.  It will take you  
>> to the DriveWire 3 page, where you can now download DriveWire HDB- 
>> DOS ROMs for the CoCo 2 and CoCo 3.  Of course, you will need to  
>> burn your own EPROM in order to take advantage of these images.
>>
>> For those of you who don't have an EPROM burner or cable, we've  
>> dropped the price of our HDB-DOS ROM Pak to $20, and are still  
>> making cables available for $10.
>>
>> The server software for Windows and Mac will go up sometime today.   
>> The Linux server on SourceForge has been updated to handle the new  
>> protocol features.
>>
>> Documentation and NitrOS-9 images will be go up this weekend.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Boisy G. Pitre
>> -- 
>> Tee-Boy
>> Mobile: 337.781.3570
>> Email: boisy at tee-boy.com
>> Web: http://www.tee-boy.com
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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