[Coco] DriveWire is just a hobby (Was: DW4 on MAc & Linux)

[Al Hartman]

Let me make it clear that I love Drivewire, and I appreciate your work, 
Aaron's work, and Mark Marlette at Cloud9 for making it available to all.

It's a great thing for the Coco, and it certainly makes the Coco more 
usable. Especially under NitrOS9, as far as I can tell.

I just told Andrew Lynch of the NV8EM project about NitrOS9 and Liber809 
(Did I mention I also own two Atari 800XL computers, and have a Liber809 on 
my wishlist?). Andrew just made an S-100 CPU card for 6502, 6802, and 6809 
processors 
(http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?23698-homebrew-6809-6802-6502-system). 
It runs CUBIX, FLEX, and DOS/65. I told him it would be neat to add the 6309 
processor and NitrOS9 to the list of supported processors and operating 
systems. I told him about Liber809 s an example of how NitrOS9 was not tied 
to the Coco hardware, and could probably be ported to his board.

It would be neat if his NV8EM 6809 system could be the nucleus for a Coco 4 
hardware platform. Who knows?

Once I learn enough to be useful, I'll pitch in to help with documentation. 
First, I need a workspace, and then some time.

I also need a few minor hardware bits (512k upgrade, burn HDB-DOS ROM, 
etc...).

It might have sounded like I wasn't appreciative. That's not the case. I 
just see more that can be done to make Drivewire more accessible and easy to 
setup for a new user.

-[ Al ]-

-----Original Message----- 
From: Boisy Pitre

I don't read the list like I used too… I've been ultra busy of late and it 
shows no signs of stopping, but I will occasionally scan the topics and see 
what is interesting. This one caught my eye :)

Some historical perspective: the DriveWire protocol and initial product was 
my creation. It was based on something I saw back in the 1990s at a CoCoFest 
in Chicago. I designed the first servers for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and 
spent many hours putting this stuff together, eventually selling it as a 
complete product through Cloud-9. I extended HDB-DOS (not my creation, but I 
acquired the rights to it) to support DriveWire, as well as wrote the 
drivers for NitrOS-9. Darren Atkinson provided updated routines which made 
the product even better.

During the time DriveWire was sold, a manual was shipped and I paid 
attention to making sure documentation was adequate. Many people bought the 
product (including the cable), as well as the ROM Pak, and had little to no 
problems getting things going.

Then I got busy with other endeavors that, at least for me, rewarded my time 
with much more compensation. After talking it over with Mark Marlette, who 
sold DriveWire through Cloud-9, I decided to make HDB-DOS and DriveWire 
freely available. I even released other products that were formerly sold 
through Cloud-9, like SuperDriver, out in the wild.

At some point, Aaron Wolfe joined the CoCo community and on his own 
volition, created DriveWire 4, which way beyond what my then-availble 
DriveWire servers on the various personal computer platforms could do. I 
collaborated with him on extending DriveWire with networking capabilities, 
and after that, Aaron has pretty much carried the DriveWire mantle.

The documentation is not Aaron's fault. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. 
After deciding to make DriveWire freely available, I put up a web page on 
Cloud-9 (rather hurriedly perhaps) to provide some information on getting 
started.

At some point, I did some additional work folding the HDB-DOS and DriveWire 
ROM sources into the ToolShed project, where they reside to this day. I 
believe that should be the official place to improve both HDB-DOS and 
DriveWire going forward.

I am very proud that DriveWire has become the standard for the CoCo 
community, and I attribute this partly to my giving it away, and partly to 
Aaron's great work on the server side. Moreover, I see DriveWire as 
belonging to the wider CoCo community now. Take it and extend it, improve 
it, and yes, write better documentation for it.

No one is asking for their boots to be licked here, but on the same token, 
please understand and appreciate the work that went into this. Don't 
complain, but rather, take up the slack and help make it better.

Peace, and be well.
-----------------
Boisy G. Pitre | Founder
Phone 337.781.3570



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