[Coco] CoCoNet wireless milestone

[Allen Huffman]

On Mar 30, 2009, at 7:55 PM, Roger Taylor wrote:
> SAVER doesn't mount a virtual disk.  It copies a remote file onto a  
> mounted virtual disk.  The file can be anything that will fit on the  
> disk (a web page, .php script response, .txt file, .gif images,  
> *everything*).

I guess that's okay, though it really does seem like it is a COPY  
operation.

SAVE with no parameters is "whatever BASIC program is there, then  
SAVEM lets the user give a name, then specify START, END, EXEC (is  
that right?) to save from memory, so along those lines, SAVER I guess  
it kinda like that. So it needs the comma thing (binary, ASCII?) and  
file names. Hrm. Maybe it will grow on me.

> DRIVE #,"URL" mounts a web disk that you can read and write to.   
> There's no ?WP errors.  The web copy won't be altered, but I am  
> working on that ability to write Directly To Web Disks, no doubt.

Where do the writes go? Mounting a DSK image via net sounds much like  
mounting a disk image on the Mac, typically just read-only (though you  
can make read/write images, but that wouldn't truly work with a web  
httpget). Making HTTP mount a read-only image would be in line with CD  
images, etc. in the rest of the world.

But, since there is a PC server taking care of all this, I guess it's  
fine for it to "mount" as a copy that is read/write. Interesting. But,  
it seems I'd either want to "grab and run" (read-only) or I'd want to  
issue commands to get a copy that I could then work with.

> DRIVE #,"URL" also has the side effect of allowing you to Mount any  
> file as a disk image so that DSKI$ can read the file in 256-byte  
> blocks into variables such as A$,B$ (128 bytes each).  This is  
> nothing new, but doing it from a web file definately adds  
> possibilities.

Yes, I guess I keep thinking "why not just mount the images on a PC  
like normal in an emulator" but having a CoCo with a ROM pak able to  
load in some code and then run the latest version of some code from  
the internet without every touching the host computer (other than  
booting the server) is kinda slick.

> ** One of the most powerful but simple features is the automatic  
> ability to append variables to URLs, to run web scripts from the  
> CoCo and to get the results back as a file saved to a virtual disk. **

Example?

I keep thinking of how this server-support would be cool for something  
like RGB-DOS but I guess rotating 4 drives in and out on a diskless  
CoCo does the trick, compared to a real CoCo that might be able to use  
all their software at any time (copy from disk to disk).

Roger, have you ever had RGB-DOS?

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