Disk BASIC and drive numbers BEFORE the filename?

In a follow up to an article I posted about undocumented syntax, here we go again…

When all you had was a cassette recorder, loading and saving was simple:

CLOAD "PROGRAM"

CSAVE "PROGRAM"

When all you had was a single disk drive, loading and saving was simple:

LOAD "PROGRAM.BAS"

SAVE "PROGRAM.BAS"

When you had more than one disk drive, loading and saving was still simple… Just add the drive number:

LOAD "PROGRAM.BAS:0"

LOAD "PROGRAM.BAS:1"

COPY "PROGRAM.BAS:0" TO "PROGRAM.BAS:1"

And we liked it that way…

0:, 1:, 2: and 3:???

Over in the CoCo Discord chat, I just learned from William “Lost Wizard” Astle that the drive number can also be put at the start of the filename:

SAVE "1:PROGRAM.BAS"

LOAD "1:PROGRAM.BAS"
Disk BASIC drive numbers … BEFORE the file???

Huh??? He points out that DOS modifications, such as RGB-DOS/HDB-DOS, do not support this.

And it’s just weird.

3 thoughts on “Disk BASIC and drive numbers BEFORE the filename?

  1. L.+Curtis+Boyle

    If I remember correctly, this syntax worked on multiple Disk operating systems that Microsoft made (I think including MS-DOS/PC-DOS, although my memory is getting quite old on that and might be incorrect).

    Reply
    1. Allen Huffman Post author

      I have now seen that some “tricks” we learned were actually used in examples in the Radio Shack manual, but I don’t recall ever seeing this one or the PAINT@ stuff. Makes me wonder how code got used to support something that users weren’t even told about. I do recall there are functions in Color BASIC that are not listed in the original manual, as well.

      Reply

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