[Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

Sun Sep 22 10:28:54 EDT 2013

Again,all the "links" defeat the purpose of a starter kit. Yes, there needs to be a document with links to all things HDBDOS, NitrOS-9 and DriveWire, this I understand and fully support. But the average "Joe Plumber" is not going to go to several sites to download pieces parts of a single working system. The people in charge of those sites need to handle their end and it's not being done. This is why I suggest a starter kit with all the basics AND a document explaining the advantages of learning the ins and outs of the system to take full advantage of what is offered in the repos/archives and with links to each of the sites of importance. This package can be updated accordingly as needed... just as the software is... There is no difference here. An update is an update.

The beginner is not going to spend several hours learning "how" to build ToolShed, or how to build NitrOS-9, which involves downloading many files such as MinGW, Mercurial, then all their dependacies to make them work, then learning the ins and outs of those systems, then building toolshed and lwtools, then the build process (if the other goes well) of hdbdos and nitros9, which by the way, takes quite a bit of time, then figuring out what you just did and where it went, then installing it all into the format needed to make it accessible for the Coco, then there's the learning curve to NitrOS-9, HDBDOS, and DriveWire. And if all that goes well.... in a couple of hours to a couple of days (according to your abillity to grasp all this), you may just see a disk load. And further more, ALL of these websites are poorly done, non-intuitive, with most links from hard to impossible to find and almost NO documentation.
 Wiki's?? Aaron come on... your Wiki for DW4 is over 5 years out of date and you want me to refer someone to a Wiki to get the latest info? Get real. Wikis are only as good as the people keeping them updated. The NitrOS9 wiki JUST got updated from it's 5 year out-of-date state. The NOS9 repo "snapshot zip" downloads were from 2008 and unusable until just recently. The same goes for toolshed downloads, and lwtools downloads. How long before the next time people gripe enough that it all gets updated again? How long before the person(s) doing the updates to it all get tired of going to all the trouble and stop (again). 

I just took a note book and jotted down all the links it would take, from start to finish, to get a complete HDBDOS/NitrOS-9/DriveWire system up and running from nothing but a "bare" Coco and PC. There was over 30 links needed and twice as many steps of installation and that's IF you already have a serial to DB9 cable. Some links I had to search for. Yes, they are there but how the hell do you find them? Like the link Tormod just gave. The only place that link exists that I know of is in that email. If you weren't on the list when it was sent, you missed it. There's no "public" place to find it (I just looked at 5 related sites as well as googled it), not even on the Toolshed website!. I completely understand anyone's reluctance to learn any of it just so they can see TeleWriter run one more time for old times sake or play with Basic09 the way they used to.
And you wonder why so many people come here or on the FB page and ask "How do I get DW running?", "How do I make an OS-9 boot disk?" or "where can I find hdbdos?". Basically there's no single "public" info site where all this can be found. Take the discussion just had on DW4/DW3, the download is on CocoCoding, part of the directions in the "old" DW4 wiki, some was on Cloud9 buried 3 links deep, the rest was passed by email ???? There are two constants I have found in all this, inconsistency and obscurity. We are hoarders by nature and our development efforts show it!

We, as programmers, engineers, and dedicated hobbyists, take all this for granted and do not think twice about it. But for the most part, we are the minority!
Most of the people I have helped and I've helped many, did not care about "building this" or "compiling that". They didn't know how nor did they want to spend hours learning how. They just wanted to use their Coco as they did in the 80s. Stick a disk in, type "RUN" or "DOS" and go for it.
A few of them barely had the knowledge of how to click an icon on their PC desktop much less build NitrOS9 or search the web for that one elusive link to an hdbdos cassette file. Most will not even read what documentation there is, much less search for more.
I would put all this info up on my site but for some reason it's not linked by any of the other Coco sites so what good would that do? Who would find it? 80% of the links currently listed on ALL the Coco websites are from 3 to 15 years old and non-existent. My site has been up for almost 4 years now and isn't going anywhere unless Google shuts it down. When that happens I will find another site. All my files are in Dropbox which is also not going anywhere too soon. The links to the files are clean with with ad free downloads, no "MediaFire" or "FileShare" crap. I update my links often as well as my webpages. I've been working on the Coco since 1984 and I haven't gone anywhere either. I even had a Coco website up on AOL's old free webspace from 1995 to about 2001 when I left AOL.

With all that said... (I told you not to get me started:-P )
I have started the "Starter Kit" and should have it done by sometime later today or possibly tomorrow depending on my wife's "HoneyDoo" list. I found my "roundtoit" under my huge stack of notes on MinGW, Mercurial, Toolshed, LWtools, and building NitrOS9 which were all under the HoneyDoo list. It rained all night so the grass is too wet to mow, the garbage went yesterday, and she's playing World of Warcraft... so I may be good for a few hours :-)

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Tormod Volden <lists.tormod at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sun, Sep 22, 2013 7:32 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

Yes, HDB-DOS's home is currently in toolshed. Toolshed has many
different things. When you "build toolshed" as Bill refers to, you
just build the host computer/PC tools for Windows/etc. Stuff that
should run on the CoCo is not built by the "normal" makefile. To build
for instance HDB-DOS, you have to go to the hdbdos folder and run
"make". The prerequisite for building HDB-DOS is to have the lwasm
assembler from LWTOOLS, plus the "tools" if you want to make WAV and
disk images. This is a very different process from building the
"tools" so that's why they are separated.

For your convenience, I have added a snapshot build of HDB-DOS to
http://toolshed.sourceforge.net/snapshots/
The zip file contains all the .WAV, .BIN, .CAS, .ROM files built by
default. Please see the Makefile  for more information about what the
different files are for.

As Aaron points out for his software, rather than redistributing these
snapshot files, please refer to the above snapshot folder.

Yes, that would be nice. We should also make a new release, so people
do not download the release from 2008 or 2010... I hope the snapshots
will be of help until then.

Tormod

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