[Coco] Multipak and Drivewire

[Ron]

Hi Bill, Michael..

Michael, your timing was perfect with your questions about DriveWire, 
HDBDOS, etc...  I'm in a situation where I'm struggling to figure out 
how to backup real physical floppy disks to my DriveWire 4 system.

My configuration is as follows:

Coco 3
MPI (upgraded PAL)
Distro Super Controller (I) in MPI slot 4.  EPROM 0 is default, boots to 
RGBDOS and is physically connected to my floppy drives.
multiFLASH cart in MPI slot 3.  This has HDBDOS "flashed" and allows 
access to DriveWire.

No matter which MPI slot I select (with MPI selector switch or poke), I 
am unable to figure out the correct combination to allow access to the 
physical floppy drives and DriveWire drives.  I have a pretty good 
understanding of the various (but similar) DRIVE commands needed to 
enable/disable real vs virtual drives.

I'm wondering if I will need an actual HDBDOS EPROM (for DW) burned and 
installed in a floppy controller cart to access both types of drives at 
the same time.  Am I running into a situation where both carts would map 
to the same address space and I'm unable to use both at the same time?

Thank you for any help anyone can provide!

-Ron


On 5/14/2015 3:52 PM, Bill Pierce via Coco wrote:
> Michael, when using DW, HDBDOS and real floppies, you issue a "DRIVEOFF" cmd which disables dw drives 0-3. This does not disable drives 4-255! You can copy real floppies to and partition from 4-255. If you need to get them to 0-3, let's say you want to copy a real disk to dw slot 0. Use DRIVEOFF, copy the disk 0 to disk 4. Then issue DRIVEON, copy disk 4 to disk 0.
> In fact, I always leave disk 4 as a temp disk for copying.
> Now, there are other forms of the "DRIVEOFF/ON" cmd.
> DRIVEOFF2 will disable dw drives0-2 and leave 3-255
> DRIVEOFF0 will disable dw drive0 and leave 1-255
> Any combo or driveooff 0-3 will work the same.
>
> Also in DW, you can issue DRIVE #x where 'x' is any number from 0-255, which will change "partitions" and put you system on another DW slot. You cannot copy from one dw drive to another, drives being the DW slots, disks being the partitions.
> There has been a lot of confussion from day one with DW due to the double use of "DRIVE"
> DRIVE1 will set "disk 1" as the default
> DRIVE#1 will set DW drive slot as default and has nothing to do with the above, but will retain the above setting on the new drive (DRIVE1).
>
> I hope this helps. The best resource is the HDBDOS User's Manual on Cloud 9's website.
> Yeah, I know... Download HDBDOS from here, the manual from there, DW from over there, the DW Wiki is over yonder, and Nitros9 is waaay over there. Bouncing all over the net to get one working package.
> It took me 3 months to find everything and get it working. I hadn't subscribed to the list at that time so I had few to ask how it was done.
>
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>
> Bill Pierce
> "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Brant <brant.michael.l at gmail.com>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Thu, May 14, 2015 4:13 pm
> Subject: [Coco] Multipak and Drivewire
>
>
> I have an MPI, I also have a CoCoSDC, along with two FD502s (one stock and
> one
> with HDB-DOS.)
> Both the SDC-DOS and HDB-DOS allow me to use Drivewire (which I
> connect to
> DW3 on my Mac Pro.)
> The question is this how (if possible) does the
> system assign disk numbers
> and drive numbers?
>
> So far I have used the drive
> function but when doing so, I it seems to
> cutoff access to the DW and only
> access physical disks.
>
> I am fairly new to DW and MPI usage, my old CoCo days
> did not have an MPI.
>