Dweebs

What are dweebs?

They're 'DWLOAD Extensible Execution Blocks', a method for extending the functionality of DWLOAD, a tool used to access DriveWire.

How do they work?

The DWLOAD client is relatively simple, due to the space constraints in the ROM. The dweeb is a mechanism to dynamically extend the functionality of DWLOAD. The dweeb is loaded from the server like any other program, but accesses the I/O routines of DWLOAD. It also reads its command parameters from the DWLOAD command line.

The best example is the "SAVE" dweeb. There is not enough room in the ROM to include support for saving files over DriveWire. However, this functionality can be loaded on demand. DLOAD"SAVE""MYFILE.BAS" saves a BASIC program to the DriveWire server. The SAVE functionality is only temporarily loaded into RAM and used during this invocation.

Since a dweeb uses the I/O routines of the calling DWLOAD, it is independent of the real transport being used, which makes development with for instance the Becker interface in XRoar very convenient.

Examples:

  DLOAD"VLOAD""MYIMAGE.VDK""MYFILE.BAS"

  DLOAD"DOS"

  DLOAD"LROM""GAME.ROM"

The Dweeb Directory

This is a list of the known Dweebs, extracted from posts on the forum. Please feel free to add any others to this list. Note: CocoSDC users will use DWLOAD instead of DLOAD for all these examples.

LROM Allows the user to load (and run) any ROM file.

  DLOAD"LROM""ROMName (no need to put the .ROM extension)

FLO2V Allows copying a floppy from the default Dragon drive to a new VDK file in the PC Windows file system so you can save a backup of the disk and use it on XRoar as well.

  DLOAD"FLO2V""VDKName.VDK"

V2FLO Allows copying an VDK to a floppy on the default Dragon drive to restore a previous backup or simply to transfer a XRoar disk to the real Dragon drives.

  DLOAD"V2FLO""VDKName.VDK"

http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4968&hilit=dweeb#p12108 VDIR] Produces a directory list of the disk image.

  DLOAD"VDIR""DiskName"