[Coco] The Beta Test release of MShell

[CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts]

CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts wrote:
>
> Bill, glad to know it's working in Mess (and Mac) even though I'm fixing a MAJOR problem as we speak. It probably wouldn't show in Mess, but the real Coco with real floppies will all but hang on startup.
> Robert Gault was running it this way and noticed the drives spinning on startup which is a drive check I inserted to init some drive info for later. I have now removed it and will have the new version up in a couple of hours.
>
> If you want some info on the vmem routines, I can send you some stuff. These routines are perfect for a text editor, it even has "plus"/"dec" routines fro inserting and deleting chars/lines/sections. It would be later tonight as I have to do some fixes to MShell at the moment, but I can send them if you want them.
> Oh... and it's all in "C".
>
> Thanks for the info... new version coming...
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>


Ah, that explains much. I just found during testing that every drive is being 
accessed when MShell starts up if a descriptor is in the bootfile. DW4 leaves 
messages that some drives have no disks, for example.

I hope removing the drive check will do the trick as MShell has become 
completely unstable on my systems. If I remove my DrivePak from the MPI and 
delete sys/ddtemp.tmp and sys/Ms1.Init I can sometimes get MShell to start 
(booting from my hard drive) and run normally. When I return DrivePak to the 
MPI, invariably MShell will either hang or even crash my Coco3 even though there 
are no drivers for the DrivePak in the OS9Boot file on my hard drive.

Robert