[Coco] dw 3

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Robert Gault <robert.gault at att.net> wrote:
> Aaron,
> HDBDOS uses DRIVE# to select the equivalent of scsi channels. That means for
> DW3, DRIVE# (where #=0 through 3) selects the virtual disk on the PC.
> DRIVEON, DRIVEOFF, and DRIVEOFF # (where #=0 through 3) turns on and off
> real floppy drives. DRIVEON makes all drives hard or virtual. DRIVEOFF
> activates the 4 floppies. DRIVEOFF 1  would make drives 0-1 floppies and
> 2-255 hard/virtual.
>
> I think you should have DW4 conform to the HDBDOS specs. There is no real
> problem moving disk content from floppies to hard/virtual drives 0-3 if you
> use a higher numbered drive for transfer. For example with floppies on,
> BACKUP0TO10. Turn off the floppies, DRIVEON. Copy drive10 to drive0,
> BACKUP10TO0. Now the content of the floppy is on the first section of the
> hard/virtual drive.
> The same thing works for the other DW drive slots 1-3.
>
> If the problem is shifting content from one DW drive to another, just use a
> RAM disk (512K Coco3) that co-ops say drive3. You would, for example:
> LOADM"RAMDISK":DRIVE#0:BACKUP130TO3:DRIVE#1:BACKUP3TO25
> In the same fashion, you could use the RAM disk as an intermediate to go
> from/to floppy<->drive0-drive3 on any of the DW slots.
>

The default behavior in DW4 is identical to DW3.  The specific
scenario that the special "hdbdos" mode in DW4 was designed to allow
is copying one .dsk file directly to/from one real floppy disk.  It's
something people have asked me about doing fairly often, and unless I
misunderstand, this is not easy with DW3 style operation.   If your
only floppy disk is at position 0, then there seems no way to write or
read the first part of a .dsk file in DW3, effectively preventing the
desired operation.

Is there a workaround that would allow simple copying of single disks
back and forth using DW3, and I've missed it?  I would like to remove
the special mode for this if it is not needed.

-Aaron

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