[Coco] DriveWire on the Raspberry Pi in five easy steps.

[Allen Huffman]

I am writing up a huge, detailed step-by-step tutorial on getting DriveWire 4 server running on a Pi. It includes all the necessary steps to download and install the Linux SD card and such.

The current DriveWire 4 is so easy to make go it only breaks down to five “you know the rest” steps:

1. Download the DriveWire server to the Pi and unzip it:

wget http://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/download/DriveWire4_4.3.3.zip
unzip DriveWire4_4.3.3.zip
cd DriveWire4_4.3.3.zip

2. Edit the config.xml file to default to your serial port on your Pi in <deviceType> (change to “serial”) and <serialDevice> (change to "/dev/ttyUSB0” or whatever your serial port it).

3. Run the server with no user interface:

java -jar DW4UI.jar -noui

4. On the CoCo, load the needed DriveWire modules from NITROS9/6x08L2/MODULES/RBF:

merge dwio.sb rbdw.dr x0.dd x1.dd x2.dd x3.dd >/dd/dw
attr /dd/dw -e
load /dd/dw

5. Use the "dw" command to test things by creating a blank disk image:

dw disk create 0 /home/pi/test.dsk
format /x0
dir /x0

I did a test dsave to the new /x0 disk and saw a bunch of copies fail with ERROR #207 (not the #237 that I might have expected to see if I loaded too many modules separately). I’m not sure what is causing that, since I still have 352K free.

But hey, it works. I never got around to trying out DriveWire because it seems like a bunch of work, but to just get the minimal system up and running was surprisingly easy.

Kudos, Aaron and gang. Nicely done.

		— A