[Coco] HDBDos and Drivewire 3 question similar to the one posed by Nick

[Robert Gault]

Ed,
As Aaron has explained, the confusion is the result of not remembering the 
commands for Drivewire. You also need to understand how RGBDOS/HDBDOS works.

1) You access the four different Drivewire slots with the command drive#n where 
n is 0-3.
2) You access any of the 255 "drives" on a Drivewire .dsk image with any of the 
HDBDOS commands:
DRIVE OFF    makes "drives" 0-3 floppies.
DRIVE OFF n  makes "drives" 0-n floppies; n is 0-3
DRIVE ON     makes "drives" 0-3 one of the "drives" in the active Drivewire
              slot.
DRIVEn       selects a "drive" in the active Drivewire slot where n is 0-255.
DIRn         where n is 0-255 works on the active Drivewire slot.
DIRnTOm      gives multiple directories.
DOSn         runs DOS for a specific "drive" on the active Drivewire slot.
RENAME DRIVE n,"string"
              puts a name in the "drive" n of the active Drivewire slot for
              display during a DIR command.
RUNM"filename.ext:drv",offset
              does a LOADM:EXEC on a "drive" in an active Drivewire slot.

3) The difference between Drivewire .dsk images and MESS/VCC .vhd images is the 
presence of an OS-9 partition with a default value of $5A000 sectors at the 
start of the image. It is present in a .vhd and absent in a .dsk image.
To be able to access the 0-255 Disk Basic "drives" in a .vhd image, you must 
POKE the offset value into the Drivewire ROM. By default, the Drivewire offset 
at $D938-$D93A is $000000.
So, if you have a .vhd image that is designed to boot OS-9 from a Disk Basic 
"drive" on that image and want to do this via Drivewire, you must use the 
following sequence.
10 DRIVE#n     where n selects the Drivewire slot
20 DRIVE ON    this is the default condition
30 POKE&HD938,5:POKE&HD939,&HA0:POKE&HD93A,0:DOSn     where n=0-255

4) COPY will not work between Drivewire slots. The COPY command can only be used 
between "drives"/floppies on the active Drivewire slot. The only ways to COPY 
files from one Drivewire slot to another are to 1) use a RAM disk, 2) use a 
special feature being developed for Drivewire4, 3) use a floppy as an intermediate.

===================================================
Per your request, you do not need to mount an image in slot#1 to copy files to a 
floppy drive#0. You can use any Drivewire slot if made active with the DRIVE#n 
command. You just can't use the COPY command unless the Drivewire "drive" and 
floppy are both active.
COPY"filename:0" TO 0               impossible
COPY"filename:4" TO 0               works
COPY"filename:1" TO 0               possible if both floppies or both on .dsk

DRIVE OFF 0:COPY"filename:1" TO 0   works between .dsk and floppy