Issues with the driveWire interface

[Yoruk]

I tried yesterday with DriveWire 3, hdbboot.dsk and the small "8 seconds" wav loader. And you know what ?

I WORKED PERFECTLY !!!!!

Here is my configuration on DW 3 :

DriveWire 3 configuration

message.png (111.75 KiB) Viewed 6551 times

First boot : got the DOS shell and the welcome message. yeahhh !!!

First boot. Yeah !!!

DSC_3042.png (1.21 MiB) Viewed 6551 times

Switched between the drives with #1 and #2. Got the good results with a DIR command :

DIR results

DSC_3046.png (1.16 MiB) Viewed 6551 times

I wasn't able to start and load anything, I was a bit confused between all the loading commands (and the files format... BAS, BIN, RUN.... I need to search the good instructions.

I need now to study how to convert VDK files into DSK files (got the small java converter from the other topic.)

Thanks for the advices, it was a problem with the DriveWire 4 software !! My computer is running Xp, didn't really know if it can explain this...

[pser1]

Hello Yoruk,
that's great news indeed!
If that way you can access DSK files, there is a java utility that converts VDK files
into DSK format by just removing the header, so they become multiple of 256!
You could download it from this page:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5363&hilit=DOSPLus+ ... r&start=10
Hope it works for you
regards
pere

[pser1]

Looking at the images you have uploaded, I see that the DIRectory
of the DSK shows the data in TANDY format, I mean it tells the number
of granules used by each file and at the end we see the free granules.
This is not the same format as Dragon Data DOS use, so it is not clear
to me if you would be able to use our VDK with this configuration.
To load programs in a Tandy environment, you should issue:
LOADM "FILENAME" and EXEC (if it is a BINary one)
LOAD"FILENAM" and RUN (if it is a BASic one, the .RUN seem to be Basic to me)

In case this works well, then you should have to 'extract' the files from
the Dragon VDK files and insert them into a Tandy blank formatted DSK
Too much work to do! I think that *nobody* has done it by now.
For sure the CoCo-SDC avoids all this work and is very affordable.
kind regards
pere

[Yoruk]

If that way you can access DSK files, there is a java utility that converts VDK files into DSK format by just removing the header, so they become multiple of 256!

Got it ! I made some conversions. I am at work right now, I'll try tonight on the physical Dragon.

Thanks for the loading tips. Should I add the extension (.BAS, .BIN...) when typing the "LOAD/LOADM" commands ?

[pser1]

No, in the Tandy world it is not needed because each one is intended for a file type.
In fact after LOADM only EXEC makes sense, and after LOAD only RUN is meaningful.

I am afraid that the only DSK files that would be read by the 'special' ported HDB-DOS
*must* be Tandy-like formatted, so all of the Dragon VDK will fail despite you convert
them into DSK just by deleting the header ... but let's see what happens!
regards
pere

EDIT: Tandy discs are 160k while Dragon ones are 182k
Number of tracks is different and the directory sits at a different place
So they should be unreadable on the 'other' system

[Yoruk]

I am afraid that the only DSK files that would be read by the 'special' ported HDB-DOS *must* be Tandy-like formatted, so all of the Dragon VDK will fail despite you convert them into DSK just by deleting the header ... but let's see what happens!

I'll let you know ! I need to take a look at the DragonTools too.

Any ideas on how to transfer a plain BASIC text file ?

[pser1]

The best is to write it in a windows text document
saving it as FILENAME.BAS and then load it into XROAR
with CTRL+L and then CLOAD.
This will put the Basic program in the Dragon without problems
From inside XRoar you could save it into a WAV casette file
and playing that wav with Audacity (for instance) you could
load it in your 'real' Dragon using the tape leads.
pere

[Yoruk]

I'm doing this for now. But is there a way to use the DriveWire to make it faster ?

[pser1]

when we first begun to work with drivewire, we had to ceate small machine code programs to
perform every command we needed.
It all worked around Tormod's DWLOAD program that connects to a drivewire server and acts
as the intermediate step between Dragon-DWserver
Using this tool, I created some dweebs to acomplish the most important tasks I wanted to do
with floppies: DIR, LOAD, COPY ...
You will find all the info in that thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4968&start=10
The dweebs named LDA and LDAF were designed to load BASIC ASCII text files from DW to Dragon
those files should be in a PC folder, not into a VDK file
The DWLOAD program can be found here
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4964&hilit=DWLOAD
Both threads contain lots of usefull info about the use of Drivewire with the Dragon
regards
pere

[Yoruk]

Thanks, I'll take a look at this.

I tried to load the basic programs. Got some "?NO" errors on some, but many others loads without problems. Unfortunately some of them can't run because of some CLEAR instructions inside the code. Maybe it's a memory conflict... But the loading was fine. Any ideas about the "?NO" error

Unfortunately it was impossible to load any BIN programs, again got some error messages (I didn't note the error...). I'll try again and write down the message.

EDIT : Also, what is exactly a "dweeb" ? A kind of patch for DriveWire ?