Re: CFFA3000 Video Posted

["Jayson Smith" <ihatespamratguynospamplease@insightbb.spamsucks.com>]

Hi,

Wow, good description! Now, a few more questions. Is there any way to swap 
out disk images while a program is running, in other words, without 
rebooting? As in, when a program needs the disk to be flipped over to access 
files on the other side. Also, is there by chance a way to access the device 
settings E.G. disk assignments, etc. through a program after the system is 
booted? Obviously before any disk has booted, *nothing* will talk. I gather 
you can't select the virtual disk drive and actually type in the name of the 
disk image to mount there? That would be very nice for us blind folks, 
rather than or in addition to a menu where you might not know how many 
arrows to hit to get to the particular image.

A totally off-the-wall suggestion here, but I don't assume the boot menu is 
located on a 'fake' disk image with DOS 3.3 or ProDOS as its OS? If it were, 
at least partial accessibility might be possible by having that image load 
Textalker. Problem, of course, is how to detect if someone has an Echo 
speech synthesizer card, and I don't know any answers to that one.
Jayson

"schmidtd" <schmidtd@my-deja.com> wrote in message 
4049a068-7d76-431c-b864-7ee62ca02b19@x10g2000vbl.googlegroups.com">news:4049a068-7d76-431c-b864-7ee62ca02b19@x10g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
On Jul 20, 3:19 pm, dog_...@macgui.com (D Finnigan) wrote:
> Jayson Smith wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> > Thanks for this. Being blind, there are a few things I'd need to know
> > before
> > I buy one. In particular, how do you manage virtual disk drives and 
> > change
> > disk images? Is it a desk accessory or what? Are the menus/commands
> > predictable, or does it remember where you were last time, etc?
>
> When you boot the Apple with the CFFA3000, it shows a menu on the screen. 
> It
> looks like when you use a USB stick, there is a bit of a wait. About 2
> seconds on the video for the USB device to be ready.

There are also beeps when devices (CF, USB) become ready.  And a buzz
when something is unsuccessful.  If you listen carefully, you will
observe a bug in the then-current firmware... it was buzzing at my USB
stick, which works perfectly well.

> The menu has 8 options.
> They are:
>
> 1.) Disk II Slot: 6 (Will reboot)
> 2.) Disk II Assignments
> 3.) SmartPort Devices: 6
> 4.) SmartPort Assignments
> 5.) Assign First From: CF
> 6.) Other Settings
> 7.) About
> 8.) Boot

Note that each menu item can be accessed by number, or by the first
letter in the name.

> Option 1 is used to toggle a slot for the virtual Disk II, presumably by
> using the left and right arrow keys.

That's correct; and you only have to reboot when changing the slot
number.  Normally, it doesn't say (Will reboot).

> Option 5 is for choosing which to boot from when USB and CompactFlash are
> both inserted to the CFFA,.

Actually, option 5 really means which memory device will fill in all
of its images into the available volumes first.  So, if you have 2
images identified from CF, and 3 from USB, and you set "Assign first
from:" to be CF, then CF images 1 and 2 get assigned to the first
available volumes; then USB gets its 3 images assigned to the next
ones, all according to the ProDOS assignment rules (Antoine posted a
link to the relevant algorithm recently...)

> When you choose the second option, Disk II assignments, you get taken to a
> two-column screen that shows the .dsk images on your USB drive in a list 
> on
> the left, and then which of these images are selected for Disk II 
> emulation,
> shown on the right.

When you select an image from the left, you get a "gleep" sound as it
successfully mounts and shows up on the right.