[Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n

[Chad H]

Yea, I would have to keep my 'regular' 160/360k .DSK images separate from
the DriveWire images I guess.
But what about telling HDB-DOS to use serial interface for the drive mounts?
Or is this an inherent behavior of HDB-DOS that doesn't need configuring?

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Robert Hermanek
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 10:08 AM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: [Coco] Drivewire for Dummies - Part 4 - DRIVE #n vs. DRIVE n

When it comes to daily usage, the most initially confusing thing about
drivewire I think is all this talk of "devices" versus "disks," and
sometimes other terms are used.  I'm not really sure what the best approach
is to clarify this, but I'll take a shot at it...

First, it is unfortunate perhaps that we did not choose a different file
extension for files that are collections of images, as opposed to a single
image.  If you have a .DSK file that contains a single image, this is what
you will have (in terms of DECB)

35 tracks X 18 sectors X 256 bytes per sector = 161,280 bytes, or
approximately a 160k file.

For the purposes of drivewire however, when you mount a .DSK file as DRIVE
#0 for example (in the slot for device 0), this .DSK file is actually a
collection of images, and as I mentioned before, perhaps we should have
chosen a different file extension such as ".DEV" for "device" or "DWD" for
drivewire disks (or something.)  Regardless, this file is simple, and is
just virtual disk images lined up one after another.  The server application
figures out what offset is necessary to find the right data.  

An example:  Let's say you mount file "MyUtils.DSK" in slot 0 on drivewire
server, and "MyGames.DSK" in slot 1 on drivewire server.  Then the following
HDB-DOS commands on your coco will perform these functions:

DRIVE #0 
    -- selects MyUtils.DSK

DRIVE 0 
    -- will access first 160k disk, data starting at byte 1 through byte
161,280.

DRIVE 1 
    -- will access second disk, data starting at byte 161,281 through byte
322,560

DRIVE 2 
    -- will access third disk, data starting at byte 322,561 through byte
483,840

To access your games...

DRIVE #1
    -- selects MyGames.DSK

Now, the DRIVE 0 command mentioned above will not give you access to the
first disk on your Utils collection, but instead the first disk in your
Games collection.

In the new Drivewire 4 server applicaiton, it sounds like all these mappings
can be changed as needed, but for this discussion I'm just assuming that
DRIVE 0 through DRIVE 255 on the coco are mapped in the same order into a
corresponding file on the server side.

This is basically all you need to know about drivewire to access data from
your PC... When I have a little more time, I'll try to list the commands for
some of the more common things people do with Drivewire.

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