FRQ - Swap HDD button

[TedThompson]

A swap HDD button would be nice, tho I expect it to be low priority. Toolbar would be great, but if real estate is too limited, one in the disk dialog tab would be great.

[tomcw]

Yes, IMO it's low priority too.

Currently changing a HDD results in a Apple II virtual power-cycle. Is this what you envisage for the swap button?

NB. For real estate, maybe consider #536.

EDIT:

Currently changing a HDD results in a Apple II virtual power-cycle.

Not true. Only enabling/disabling the HDD interface results in a power-cycle. You can change the HDD images without a power-cycle.

[TedThompson]

Changing HDD images doesn't cause a reboot. Enabling/disabling the HDD controller does, but I can trade HDD images all day long like I was swapping floppies. That's partly what inspired the idea. (v1.27.8.0)

[tomcw]

Would you really hot-swap HDDs on a real, power-on machine?
Surely you'd power down the Apple II, swap HDDs, then power it up.

[TedThompson]

Non sequitur. We are quite specifically discussing an emulator. Further the virtual drives in slot 7 can be use for any non 5.25" media image, such as 3.5" images.

[inexorabletash]

Virtual II has the "OmniDisk" concept, a generic smartport drive that allows mounting anything but 5.25" disks, but with similar hot-swapping affordances.

In real life, SCSI Zip Drives are probably the comparable device.

[TedThompson]

It would seem that these applications simply reinforce the idea of the swap and if fact point to a compelling reason for these 2 drives to be more directly available like the Disk II drives. It seems they should also have loading buttons and a swap button on the toolbar.

[tomcw]

How does ProDOS react to fixed-disks HDDs being swapped?

Zip drives have a removable flag when queried by the host machine, but fixed HDDs won't. So ProDOS may react badly if you swap these seemingly non-removable HDDs!

What is the workflow for telling ProDOS that a new HDD has been switched in?

I'm just trying to anticipate potential problems here.

[TedThompson]

Hmm if you're talking about write caching you may have a point. I dont know. But from limited testing I can change images and move images with no ill effects. Prodos seems to simply view a volume as a volume and its either there or not.

For instance I can have a volume called /foo/ in s6d1 and one called /bar/ in s6d2 and set the prefix to /foo/ and it doesn't care if I swap using the button. BUT! What I don't know is if the software plays any tricks informing the emulation that the "disks" have moved.

I think the bigger issue is that the "adapter" in S7 of the emulation isn't being treated as a strict HDD interface since I can mount 800kb FDD images there.

[tomcw]

Work complete. Closing.

[tomcw]

NB. Release of AppleWin 1.28.0 containing this feature is here.

[sicklittlemonkey]

Perhaps Ctrl-F5 could be a shortcut for this.