[Coco] Newbie questions

Wed Jan 22 20:04:09 EST 2014

I do not understand why you are using the drivewire version of Vcc,
but this seems to be a source of confusion for everyone.

Don't use that version.  It is designed for a specific situation that
does not apply here.

Use the standard Vcc.  Things will be much easier.

-Aaron

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Right now all I'm trying to do is copy a disk from the FD-502 0 slot (not drivewire) partition 4 of the VHD (Its a premade Hard drive image I picked up somewhere or another: Nitros9.VHD) I only had drivewire on because HDBDOS seemed to require it. I was following the instructions for installing the Nitros9 boot disk found on page 16 of the HDB-DOS user manual (though I'm just trying to backup a game, not a boot disk). Seems I had two problems with this.
>
> 1: HDBDOS automatically reverts to the drivewire drives when you try to BACKUP, even when you use the DRIVE OFF command to turn off slots 1-3 of the VHD. I had the disk in the floppy drive, not drivewire, and it was looking in drivewire, hence the "DoOP_READEX: No disk in drive 0" error on the DW status screen.
>
> 2. When I switched to RGB-DOS I also unwittingly switched my syntax from "DRIVE OFF" to "DRIVEOFF" (hence the SN error there).
>
> I fixed these two mistakes and now Donkey Kong is successfully installed in the 4 slot of the VHD
>
> Thanks for your continued help guys.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 6:25 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday 22 January 2014 18:06:58 Bill Pierce did opine:
>
>> Sean,
>> I think you've confused the use of Dsk images with VHD images.
>> RgbDos & HdbDos are BOTH designed to use a 256 partition Hard Drive
>> image.. Each partition is formatted into an emulated 180k single sided,
>> double density 5.25 disk. The drives referred to by hdbdos are NOT the
>> driveslots in drivewire (more on this below).
>
> I think it should be pointed out that these virtual disks, do not in fact
> have ANY partition markers on the disks proper.  Each and ever one of them
> is the product of some fairly simple calculations in the drivers, anchored
> to the drive by a 3 byte figure written into ram for HDBDOS, or for nitros9
> by some numbers stored in the device descriptors.
>
>> You use a drive slot to mount a VHD (virtual hard drive) and then you
>> can format (DSKINI 0-255) 256 floppy images on this drive. Do your
>> floppy disk mounting in VCC cartidge menu (DRIVEOFF).
>>
>> In this way, you have 256 drives in hdbdos (DRIVEON) OR 4 Floppies & 252
>> drives in hsbdos. You can mount more VHDs in the other DW slots and
>> switch to them with DRIVE #0-255 (NOT DRIVE 0-255) DRIVE 6 will switch
>> to "partition" 6 on the VHD...
>> DRIVE #6 will switch to the 6th slot in DW (256 more drives)
>>
>> You can not move files from one VHD to another without special
>> programming and/or setup. Too much to get into here.
>
> Not really, even in HDBDOS, but its more complex than it is in nitros9.
>
> To do it in nitros9, all you need to do is create an si.dd descriptor that
> is identical to the sh.dd descriptor except for its name, and set the stp
> value for /sh to the src virtual disk, set the stp in /si to the target
> virtual disk, and all you have done is to create a 2nd  pointer to a
> different vdisk.  Copy away, using dsave or whatever.
>
>> I know all this is confusing and it all needs different terminology to
>> make things much clearer, but that's another argument we've already
>> been through here a couple of times. And it was pretty.. The problem is
>> that each part of the system was written by different people  with
>> different goals and eventually someone made it all work together.
>>
>> There's also a way to use each DW driveslot as a drive, but hdbdos
>> doesn't see it this way
>>
>> Now... in NitrOS9.... you can access each dw drive slot as individual
>> large HDs or floppies..... But that's another story....
>
> The one I alluded to above.
>
> Not only that, this second si.dd descriptor does not have to point into the
> first 0-255 vdisk area on your HD.  You can just as easily set its offsets
> so that it would be looking at a 2nd, or 3rd or 4th, bank of 256 virtual
> disks. 512 virtual floppies on your HD, or more depending on how its
> formatted, even several thousand are theoretically possible.  But if your
> memory is no better than mine, you had better have a printed index to tell
> you what is where. ;-)
>
> If anyone with a big drive is interested I can elaborate.
>
>> BTW... The hdbdos installed with Vcc 1.4.3b is specifically designed to
>> run with the Becker port and DW. If you want to run Vcc without dw,
>> just switch the configuration to RGBDos and do a cold start (hit F9
>> twice). <make sure "Enable Becker Port" is unchecked in the bitbanger
>> config. The 2 OS's are "almost" identical
>>
>>
>> Bill Pierce
>> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>>
>>
>> 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: Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com>
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Wed, Jan 22, 2014 4:00 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Newbie questions
>>
>>
>> Ok, so I've been reading the HDB-DOS 1.1 manual, and trying to get the
>> backup command to work. The virtual ROM image I'm using is the one that
>> came with the 1.43 beta: hdbdw3bc3.rom. Now this ROM will not give me a
>> command prompt unless drivewire 4 is running. It boots up just fine and
>> beeps, but there is no flashing little cursor, and I can't type
>> anything into the emulator. This is true whether or not I have the
>> becker port enabled. If drivewire 4 is running I can enter commands.
>> DISKOFF seemed to work with drivewire running, I could see the game
>> with "dir" but when I tried to "BACKUP 0 to 4" I got an IO error, and
>> now no matter how many times I do a hard reset, DISKOFF just returns an
>> SN error. This is with HDB-DOS as well as RGB-DOS, with drivewire on or
>> off. Stuck again I'm afraid.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 7:10 PM, Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> cool. I get it now. I also got a copy of the HDBDOS users manual now,
>> thanks to Robert. Stay tuned for more goofy questions.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 6:20 PM, Bill Pierce
>> <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Sean,
>> The answer to that is no. Driveoff just shuts down virtual drives 0-3
>> (of 256 virtual drives) and allows access to 0-3 on real floppies. This
>> allows you to copy to and from 0-3 (real) / 4-255 (virtual)
>> Drive on turn virtual 0-3 back on and turns of real 0-3
>>
>>
>> Bill Pierce
>> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>>
>>
>> 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: Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com>
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Tue, Jan 21, 2014 5:57 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Newbie questions
>>
>> Thank you all for the info. If I'm understanding
>> correctly RGBDOS doesn't allow
>> access to the disk drives because it is substituting a hard drive for
>> them. If you want the disk drives you have to DRIVEOFF to shut down the
>> hard drive. But if that's the case, how does one go about tranferring
>> data to the VHD (since you
>>
>> can't read a disk from a drive and access the hard drive at the same
>> time)? For instance if I wanted to take DK.dsk and transfer it to one
>> of the 256 partitions
>>
>> of Nitros9.VHD What would I need to do?
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> Cheers, Gene
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
> Required reading:
> <http://culturalslagheap.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/elemental/>
> I've Been Moved!
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> dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of
>          law-abiding citizens.
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