[Coco] Question regarding OS-9 Default Drive (/DD)

[Bill Pierce]

Nick,
"/dd" specifies the "default device" you boot from or your main drive. It can be any drive on your system that is your main drive. Let's say I boot from "/x0" and it's my main, you boot from "/s0" and it's your main.
If I write software that wants to load it's files from "/x0", that software wouldn't work on your system, so "/dd" was born". By naming your "main" "/dd" and only using "/dd" in software that needs hard coding to a drive, any software needing access to your main can find it... as in "/dd/cmds", "/dd/sys", "/dd/Temp" etc.
The real magic is in the programming... not in OS9.
As for your comment on labeling modules internally with descriptions..... that just can't be done. We have spent YEARS trimming the fat off the system modules to get more memory to do more things and have more system memory... to add to the size of those files would be redundent to what has been accomplished.
As for identifying hardware, MShell does just that. It NEVER once querries the user for a drive name or filename (unless you're renaming or something). The initialization routines at the startup of MShell IDs every drive on the system and when you want to change drives, it gives you a list and you just point-n-click.
Most aspects of MShell are like that, no user input, just point-n-click choices. This also knocks user error in the head. No more mispelled filenames as they are selected from a list that is alrready there.
Most of the info about any given OS9 system is already there... it's just that no programmers have ever utilized what could be done with the available info.
I have one major bug I'm trying to squash and then MShell is about to change all that :-)
 

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Marentes <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>
To: CoCoList <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sat, Nov 8, 2014 8:55 pm
Subject: [Coco] Question regarding OS-9 Default Drive (/DD)


I am wondering how OS-9 handles the default drive.

I always thought that the idea behind OS-9 is that regardless of your 
OS-9 hardware, the driver maps the hardware to a software "translator" 
(my terms because I don't know the official terms yet). This is the 
default drive (/dd)?

That way, whether you have a 40trk, 80trk, drivewire, SDC etc drive, the 
application program doesn't care because it talks to this 
"software/device translator".

So, what has me wondering is why, when I look at the NitrOS-9 software 
website (http://nitros9.sourceforge.net/latest/) there are so many files 
and many are just duplicates but configured for there respective loading 
device?

Seems messy, confusing and goes against what I thought was how OS-9 works.

I would have thought that once one configures an NitrOS-9 to suit their 
setup, the single version of the application disk/s is all that is needed.

Does this mean that when a new program is added, a version of the same 
application needs to be created for each device?

Seems wrong and but I'm sure there is something I'm not understanding here.

Nick

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