[Coco] dw 3

[Robert Gault]

Aaron Wolfe wrote:
 ><snip>
> I would propose that going forward, we load individual disks rather
> than files containing 256 disks.  This allows easier management of
> files and makes it easy to get disks in and out of the CoCo system.
>

That makes perfect sense but HDBDOS could cause problems. At the moment, after a 
DRIVEON (the default HDBDOS setting) drives 0-3 are "hard drives" not floppies. 
When Drivewire is in use in normal mode, these drives are all on the same 
mount/slot. If the user inadvertently saves something to drive1, thinking it 
will go to slot1, drive0 is automatically expanded to more than 35 tracks. Of 
course any drive number higher than 3 makes the selected drive larger still.

So, without a rewrite of HDBDOS, DW4 in alternate mode must subvert HDBDOS so 
that different mounts/slots are used rather than drives within a single mount. 
It sounds like that's what you have already done.
To prevent massive confusion on the part of the user, DW4 should clearly 
indicate which mode it is in and what the drive number means in that context: 
DIR#, DSKINI#, SAVE"filename:#", etc.

===================

To answer a point made in another message, HDBDOS stores a directory name in 
track17 sector17. Any DIR displays the name if present. RENAME is the command to 
place a name on a drive.
RENAME"old filename"TO"new filename"  works on the default drive
RENAME" DRIVE#,"filename"  works for the indicated drive.
RENAME DRIVE#,""     removes the drive name.