[Coco] Super IDE vs. Drive Pak

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Boisy G. Pitre <boisy at tee-boy.com> wrote:
> Ok.  As Frank says, I probably spew out a chuckle when he asks... gotta love his persistence!
>
> So, as has been mentioned, adding extra functionality to HDB-DOS would push it out of its comfy little 8K spot into a 16K footprint.
>
> Here's why this is bad, in my opinion:
>
> 1. Legacy disk controllers like the FD-500, FD-501 and FD-502 which only can accommodate 8K ROMs.
> 2. Moving to a 16K EPROM breaks some legacy M/L programs (don't remember which ones, but this was a big reason back in the day for RGB-DOS (now HDB-DOS) to stay small)
>
> One can argue if these are really "good" reasons, seeing that everyone is pretty much interested in running new software on new devices now-a-days, but then there are other considerations:
>
> 1. Adding this functionality would require syntax changes that I haven't fully explored the ramifications of.  Preserving existing syntax might be a challenge, might not...
> 2. It would require a lot of time for both development and testing.  Time is something I don't have much of anymore...
>
> So, let me segue into another point of discussion: if I were to release the source code to HDB-DOS, would anyone be willing to take it and expand upon it?
>
> Frankly, I'm thinking of doing just that.  As far as I know, we don't have a true community open source Disk BASIC DOS.  HDB-DOS has been around for a long time and the source is well commented.  It has room to grow, as others have mentioned...
>
> If more than one person can put forth a good argument for me to do it, and, more importantly, promise to work on it, I may do just that...

That is very interesting.  I have long wanted to add the DW4
functionality found in OS9 (networking, midi) to DECB, and an open
source hdbdos would make that quite a bit easier.  However... to
promise I'd actually do it is probably not possible.  For one thing,
I'm not sure I have the skill.  Still, very interesting.