Machine Independent Storage Idea...

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words:
>On 6 Dec 2006 at 11:21, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> > Darn interesting idea, though :) That implies some intelligence 
> controlling
> > the gadget 'remotely' though, or at the mickey-mouse end of the scale, a
> > rotary switch on top of the device to say which image to select. Perhaps a
> > version 2 thing?
>
>Ideally, a couple of pushbuttons and a small LCD display, I'd think.
>Floppy changing is a manual effort in the real world; no reason to do
>it differently in the simulated world.

RGBDos for the CoCo makes it quite a bit easier - it patches the onboard 
RSDOS to allow up to 256 emulated floppies - there's a command that allows 
some real floppies in the mix as well (say, drives 0 and 1 are real, then 
2-255 are emulated on the CF card).

The logic associated with onboard buttons (and a display) adds a layer of 
complexity to the device that would have to be thoroughly debugged... 
sometimes software can be easier. ;-)

> > Hmm, that 'feels' messy, somehow. Not sure why - but I think I'd prefer 
> one
> > gadget per drive...

To me, the whole point of "big storage" is to increase the number of 
floppies available without increasing the cost.... if you have one gizmo 
per drive, the cost increase for multiple dries goes up linearly. With the 
emulated solution, you could (easily) have hundreds of floppies, without 
the hundredfold increase in cost.

$100 for my CoCo IDE interface and $20 for the 256Meg might sound like a 
lot until one figures I get 256 RSDOS floppies *and* a 170Meg NitrOS9 hard 
drive all in one (very) small package. That's $0.50 per virtual floppy 
drive & a relatively large NitrOS9 HD kicked in for good measure... ;-)

Anywho, that's just me, and I like me that way. (At least that's what the 
voices say... ;-) )

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me
zmerch at 30below.com.         |
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers