[Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 3 - Chicken and Egg

[Robert Hermanek]

All the previous explanation assumes that you have HDB-DOS running on your coco.  So how do you get it running on your coco?

1)  If you have a disk system, you can get or create a physical disk that contains the HDB-DOS program.  This includes a loader that basically gets HDB-DOS into RAM, then pulls the rug out from under DECB and replaces it with HDB-DOS.  From then on you are accessing virtual disks through your rs-232 port instead of real disks through your controller cartridge.

There have been .DSK images posted here, that if restored to a physical floppy, would give you a nice HDB-DOS loader disk.  However if you do not have drivewire already running, it can be pretty difficult to get the .DSK copied to a real floppy.  There are PC utilities that can do this, assuming you have properly configured floppy drives on your PC (I've never gotten this to work myself.)  Your best bet might be to have someone you know help you out and mail you a disk.  Otherwise, does anyone know if you can still get a HDB-DOS disk from cloud9tech?  That would be a valuable service I think...

2)  You can load HDB-DOS loader from cassette.   Now, you don't have to use an actual tape -- if you have a .WAV file on your PC that contains all the screeching and wailing we all know and love from our younger days, you can get the audio out on your PC connected to the audio in on your coco, then hit play on your .WAV file and "load" it into your coco.  Or, you could play the .WAV onto an actual tape recorder if you wanted to load from a physical cassette.  I feel like someone recently successfully loaded HDB-DOS using a .WAV file, if so, please reply directly to me with your audio file if you are willing--I'd like to test it myself, keep it on hand, and possibly help other drivewire newbies in the future...

3)  You can burn an eprom with hdb-dos and place it in a cartridge so that it loads on boot.  This is by far the most elegant, but also the most technically challenging.  How to burn and install ROM images is a subject all its own, and I'm afraid I do not know enough about it.  Again, cloud9tech will help you out, they did me!