[Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

Sun Sep 22 11:59:42 EDT 2013

I concur with this entirely.  I also feel what Aaron said about
"documentation not being fun".  While I'm not currently employed as a
"programmer" per say, I do make use of my skills in this area at my work
place not only for personal benefit but also for the benefit of co-workers.
Many of my projects there are SOLEY for their benefit in fact.  I to  do not
care for "waisting time" on documentation.  Some of those knuckleheads
wouldn't even read it anyways, they just come straight to me to figure out
how to do something with the applications I come up with.  It's just how
people are wired...they go to whatever resource is the most convenient and
helpful.   Here in the CoCo online community, people can't just call up  or
talk directly to the authors, they need a good place to go to get
'standardized/official' support.  Now if they take it upon themselves to
experiment and go outside the box to 3rd party ROM's or other mods, they
should seek support elsewhere on that.  It's not the responsibility of the
author to support mahem they didn't create.

On a side note... I think I found that DriveWire 4 package is NOT supported
by Windows '98.  If it is, will someone please tell me what I'm missing.  I
will describe what I've done so far.  Keep in mind DriveWire 3 already runs
fine on this machine.
*  Unzipped and executed DriveWire 4, got message: "Java 1.5 is required"
and it closed, so I researched
	For the lastest win'98 compatibal Java package which does seem to be
1.5.
* Installed Java 1.5 (586) revision 18 and attempted to execute DW4, got
message: "Could not find the Main class.  Program will exit".
	I Googled this and found someone had some luck running it from the
command line after Java was added to the PATH so
	I tried that and got: Exception in thread "Main"
Java.Lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError

I suspect DriveWire 4 was compiled to use a higher version of Java, which
Windows '98 doesn't seem to be able to run a higher version of Java.  I
tried installing Java 1.6 and it failed. 

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Bill Pierce
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2013 9:29 AM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Subject: Re: [Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

Again,all the "links" defeat the purpose of a starter kit. Yes, there needs
to be a document with links to all things HDBDOS, NitrOS-9 and DriveWire,
this I understand and fully support. But the average "Joe Plumber" is not
going to go to several sites to download pieces parts of a single working
system. The people in charge of those sites need to handle their end and
it's not being done. This is why I suggest a starter kit with all the basics
AND a document explaining the advantages of learning the ins and outs of the
system to take full advantage of what is offered in the repos/archives and
with links to each of the sites of importance. This package can be updated
accordingly as needed... just as the software is... There is no difference
here. An update is an update.

The beginner is not going to spend several hours learning "how" to build
ToolShed, or how to build NitrOS-9, which involves downloading many files
such as MinGW, Mercurial, then all their dependacies to make them work, then
learning the ins and outs of those systems, then building toolshed and
lwtools, then the build process (if the other goes well) of hdbdos and
nitros9, which by the way, takes quite a bit of time, then figuring out what
you just did and where it went, then installing it all into the format
needed to make it accessible for the Coco, then there's the learning curve
to NitrOS-9, HDBDOS, and DriveWire. And if all that goes well.... in a
couple of hours to a couple of days (according to your abillity to grasp all
this), you may just see a disk load. And further more, ALL of these websites
are poorly done, non-intuitive, with most links from hard to impossible to
find and almost NO documentation.
 Wiki's?? Aaron come on... your Wiki for DW4 is over 5 years out of date and
you want me to refer someone to a Wiki to get the latest info? Get real.
Wikis are only as good as the people keeping them updated. The NitrOS9 wiki
JUST got updated from it's 5 year out-of-date state. The NOS9 repo "snapshot
zip" downloads were from 2008 and unusable until just recently. The same
goes for toolshed downloads, and lwtools downloads. How long before the next
time people gripe enough that it all gets updated again? How long before the
person(s) doing the updates to it all get tired of going to all the trouble
and stop (again). 

I just took a note book and jotted down all the links it would take, from
start to finish, to get a complete HDBDOS/NitrOS-9/DriveWire system up and
running from nothing but a "bare" Coco and PC. There was over 30 links
needed and twice as many steps of installation and that's IF you already
have a serial to DB9 cable. Some links I had to search for. Yes, they are
there but how the hell do you find them? Like the link Tormod just gave. The
only place that link exists that I know of is in that email. If you weren't
on the list when it was sent, you missed it. There's no "public" place to
find it (I just looked at 5 related sites as well as googled it), not even
on the Toolshed website!. I completely understand anyone's reluctance to
learn any of it just so they can see TeleWriter run one more time for old
times sake or play with Basic09 the way they used to.
And you wonder why so many people come here or on the FB page and ask "How
do I get DW running?", "How do I make an OS-9 boot disk?" or "where can I
find hdbdos?". Basically there's no single "public" info site where all this
can be found. Take the discussion just had on DW4/DW3, the download is on
CocoCoding, part of the directions in the "old" DW4 wiki, some was on Cloud9
buried 3 links deep, the rest was passed by email ???? There are two
constants I have found in all this, inconsistency and obscurity. We are
hoarders by nature and our development efforts show it!

We, as programmers, engineers, and dedicated hobbyists, take all this for
granted and do not think twice about it. But for the most part, we are the
minority!
Most of the people I have helped and I've helped many, did not care about
"building this" or "compiling that". They didn't know how nor did they want
to spend hours learning how. They just wanted to use their Coco as they did
in the 80s. Stick a disk in, type "RUN" or "DOS" and go for it.
A few of them barely had the knowledge of how to click an icon on their PC
desktop much less build NitrOS9 or search the web for that one elusive link
to an hdbdos cassette file. Most will not even read what documentation there
is, much less search for more.
I would put all this info up on my site but for some reason it's not linked
by any of the other Coco sites so what good would that do? Who would find
it? 80% of the links currently listed on ALL the Coco websites are from 3 to
15 years old and non-existent. My site has been up for almost 4 years now
and isn't going anywhere unless Google shuts it down. When that happens I
will find another site. All my files are in Dropbox which is also not going
anywhere too soon. The links to the files are clean with with ad free
downloads, no "MediaFire" or "FileShare" crap. I update my links often as
well as my webpages. I've been working on the Coco since 1984 and I haven't
gone anywhere either. I even had a Coco website up on AOL's old free
webspace from 1995 to about 2001 when I left AOL.

With all that said... (I told you not to get me started:-P ) I have started
the "Starter Kit" and should have it done by sometime later today or
possibly tomorrow depending on my wife's "HoneyDoo" list. I found my
"roundtoit" under my huge stack of notes on MinGW, Mercurial, Toolshed,
LWtools, and building NitrOS9 which were all under the HoneyDoo list. It
rained all night so the grass is too wet to mow, the garbage went yesterday,
and she's playing World of Warcraft... so I may be good for a few hours :-)

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Tormod Volden <lists.tormod at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sun, Sep 22, 2013 7:32 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

Yes, HDB-DOS's home is currently in toolshed. Toolshed has many different
things. When you "build toolshed" as Bill refers to, you just build the host
computer/PC tools for Windows/etc. Stuff that should run on the CoCo is not
built by the "normal" makefile. To build for instance HDB-DOS, you have to
go to the hdbdos folder and run "make". The prerequisite for building
HDB-DOS is to have the lwasm assembler from LWTOOLS, plus the "tools" if you
want to make WAV and disk images. This is a very different process from
building the "tools" so that's why they are separated.

For your convenience, I have added a snapshot build of HDB-DOS to
http://toolshed.sourceforge.net/snapshots/
The zip file contains all the .WAV, .BIN, .CAS, .ROM files built by default.
Please see the Makefile  for more information about what the different files
are for.

As Aaron points out for his software, rather than redistributing these
snapshot files, please refer to the above snapshot folder.

Yes, that would be nice. We should also make a new release, so people do not
download the release from 2008 or 2010... I hope the snapshots will be of
help until then.

Tormod

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