[Coco] Drivewire client for OS9/68K

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 4:09 AM, Willard Goosey <goosey at virgo.sdc.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 09:12:00PM -0400, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> DW on the CoCo/OS9 is implemented in two parts: One is an RBF driver,
>> the other is used by that driver to talk to the hardware.  Assuming
>> RBF works the same on OS9/68k, the RBF portion should be a fairly
>> straightforward port.
>
> IIRC, the OSK filesystem is slightly different.  28 char filenames & a
> 32-bit cluster number? Something like that anyway.  RBF ver. N+1, where
> N is the CoCo version.
>

Filenames never make it down to DW, since it is an RBF driver and not
a file manager itself.  DW deals strictly with sectors, it provides a
sector when RBF asks for it and writes it when RBF tells it to.
Everything above that level is handled by RBF itself.  One of my
favorite things about OS9 is how nicely layered things like that are.

Assuming RBF works the same way in OS9/68k, all you'd have to be
concerned about is reading and writing sectors when asked to.  If the
LSN in 68k is 32 bits wide, there will have to be some changes made in
the server as the CoCo used 24 bits, but I can handle that when/if the
time comes.  On the CoCo, sectors are always 256 bytes, if this is not
true in OS9/68k then there would have to be some provision for that as
well.  Other than that, shouldn't be any issues.  The design of OS9
would make such a think much easier than it might have been otherwise.

-Aaron


> Willard
> --
> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
> Socorro, New Mexico, USA
> I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
>  -- R.E. Howard
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