[Coco] VCC hdbdw3bc3.rom files

[Salvador Garcia]

I would like to share my experience as a first time serious user of VCC 2.01b. First of all, I am familiar with the CoCo and have used a real CoCo I in the past, plus I have been reading almost all of the posts here, so while I do not have much hands on experience, I am not totally ignorant in matter relating to the CoCo :-).
My first experience with VCC was with 1.43b. I installed it, ran a Hello World program, was happy and limited my tinkering with it. This time around I had more motivation to see how it works with DriveWire 4 and at this time I want to learn more about VCC, its inner workings, external media (i.e. floppies and hard drives), DriveWire, and the DriveWIre protocol.
>From a perspective of a first time DW4/VCC user here are some thoughts:
I downloaded VCC 2.01b and installed it successfully. Remarks on this list and in the VCC doc indicated that the Becker port was now a plug in virtual cartridge. I understood that I needed to connect the virtual MPI and the the virtual Becker cartridge to it. I downloaded DW4 and followed instructions. No problem there. I read over the instructions for VCC (on the DW wiki), but these are for v143b and did not apply to v2.01b.
On reading the VCC 2.01b doc I extracted the most vital information which was basically that the Becker cartridge needed to be plugged in, but should not be selected. I also saw the reference that VCC would automatically load the hdbdos rom when the Becker cartridge was plugged in.
>From the doc:
VCC User's Guide, page 29To use the Becker Port cart and DW4, you will need to use this feature tomount the “hdbdw3bc3.rom” image, and check “External Rom Image”.
Page 31The Becker port will automatically attempt to load the “hdbdw3bc3.rom” file from the VCC 2.0.1program folder.
Page 29 explicitly lists hdbdw3bc3.rom, so I went with that.
Since page 31 mentioned the above I figured that it automatically did what was mentioned on page 29, so I ignored the comment on that page and I did not do anything further. When I tested I did not have any communication with the DW4 server. When I saw that it did not work, I went ahead and followed the above page 29 indication. After this it simply worked like a charm. I had already defined the ip port using the DriveWire Server config.
Where I dropped the ball catastrophically was in not reading the VCC doc to the end, where the different HDB DOS ROM images are described clearly and concisely. It was only after I saw Bill's comment, "and which IS explained in the VCC manual" that I went back and reread all of the doc, feeling rather idiotic when I found the information that answered my original question.
So far this has been a revealing experience and am blown away by the complexity of both DW4 and VCC. I still have questions, but will do more REE* before I ask here. In any case, there is so much that I don't doubt that I'll end up asking something that is documented, but I'd rather feel like an idiot for asking then to feel like an idiot for not asking :-D. Again, thanks all for your help. Salvador
*REE Research, Exploration & Experimentation.


      From: Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au>
 To: CoCoList <coco at maltedmedia.com> 
 Sent: Thursday, July 7, 2016 2:31 AM
 Subject: Re: [Coco] VCC hdbdw3bc3.rom files
   
Ok, we have different ideas but that's ok. It's not my project,

Nick



On 7/07/2016 12:48 PM, Bill Pierce via Coco wrote:
> Nick, why not have VCC install as a standard "off the shelf" 128k Coco 3 with no extras (6809, 89mhz, ECB & SECB, no MPI, no disk controller, etc), just like you bought it in Radio Shack in 1986?....
>
> Guess what?....
>
> IT IS!!!
>
> It is left up to the user to add more memory, 6309, MPI, diskcontroller, HD interface, Orchestra90 etc.
> When the disk controller is loaded (by user's choice), it DEFAULTS to RSDOS. Any changes or upgrades are done by the user.
>
> The other roms are included in the VCC installation as an extra for those who want to start using dw4 right away and don't want to have to go to one place for the roms, another for the manual another for the emulator. And since there is confusion of the naming of the HDBDOS roms at the toolshed distro, only the roms needed for VCC are include in the package, but not setup in the emulation. The instructions for setting up the roms is in the new Vcc manual (included in the installation and on the website) as well as links to the sites need to upgrade anything that may be out of date (nothing is).
> I was originally going to include the Coco 3 manuals as well as the HDBDOS manual (I still may), but it made the download too large. I left that to my "Starter Kits" instead (which are a different beast altogether, and no, they're not standard and never will be).
>
> Until there is a "standard" place to get what's needed without having to search through 5 or 6 obscure websites, I will continue to provide everything needed to get going whether you want standard RSDOS, HDBDOS, or RGBDOS, all of which Vcc is designed for and with the exception of HDBDOS, has been included with Vcc since about version 1.40 long before I became involved. HDBDos was included for completeness since the new Vcc supports the becker port & dw4. I also included the HDBLBA.ROM for the "superIDE.dll" which is also included with Vcc as well as the Orchestra 90 rom for the "orc90.dll". Originally, the roms were built into Vcc (including RGBDOS), but Joe (original author) wanted them removed from the program code for copyright reasons (including ECB & SECB), so they are now loaded dynamically on startup0 and when the carts are loaded. If the roms are not present in the installation, Vcc will error and inform you there are no roms and shut down.
>
> Of course, we could just do it like Mess and tell you to find your own roms....
>
> The OP just wanted to know which HDBDOS rom should be used (which they loaded themselves and which IS explained in the VCC manual), so I answered. The same question would have been asked had they been directed to the toolshed site for the roms but with even more confusion due to the 53 roms, bins and wavs created there for various setups and only 3 of which can be used for Vcc.
>
> For that matter, not every user wants disk controller. Some users never owned one. I am just responsible for what is included in the installation package... not what the users do with it.
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull


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