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Here's some screen grabs as I was getting ready to test disk insertion/removal under GSOS. Note that everything you see may or may not change by the time you get your CFFA3000, but here is a snapshot of development at one particular moment in time:

First, the main menu. You get here by a CDA on the GS, or by invoking the firmware, or by hitting 'M' on power-on. This gives you a nice overview of the firmware revision (development drop 114 is already old), the physical slot the CFFA3000 is in, what memory devices you have plugged in, and how many virtual disks are currently being hosted:


Next, the Status screen. This shows you exactly what images are where, and there are some options to un-insert the disk images and get ready to insert other ones.


And finally, the choose images screen. The left side shows the images that are on your media, and the right side shows what images are hosted. You use the arrow keys to move left/right between the panels, and tab switches you between CF/USB (left side) or SmartPort/Disk II (right side). You can add images (by hitting Return on an image on the left side) or remove images (by hitting Delete on an image from the right side). You can see there are times when you get a view of the entire long name, and cases where it's shortened to the 8.3 filename - mostly because of screen size limitations of 40 columns:


There's still a lot of work going on to synchronize the "actual" state of the image hosting (Status screen) and the "desired" state of image hosting (Choose images screen). As I said, this area is where a lot of change will still be taking place before the final release is ready. It's perfectly useable now, but there are always improvements that can be made to make it easier to use and understand.

Great to see more!

It's a shame about the 8.3 filename limitation. The interface can't use 80 columns to enable Apple II+ compatibility?

I'm just thinking about it from maintaining the archive at 'What is the Apple IIGS?'. Generally, I've liked to have kept the filenames for disk images at least Mac OS 8 & 9 friendly, but more recently I haven't even been bothered with that. 8.3 file names are sure going to make it tricky to know which disk is which for games and programs that require multiple disk images.

Apart from going 80 columns, can the interface be re-tweaked to allow longer filenames (I can't even remember now how many characters the classic Mac OS supports, but could this be the baseline?). For example, instead of splitting file lists done the middle vertically, could it be done horizontally?

- Alex

The 8.3 filename will show in the file lists, but the longname will be represented one way or another. In prior revs, it was mocked up as showing at the bottom of the screen - I expect it will be there for real when it's all said and done.

New firmware today, with update firmware goodness. While testing that, I grabbed another screen shot - the long filenames are on the left as well as at the bottom now.

Genius! :-)

- Alex

The 8.3 file names seen in the screen shots will be gone soon. There were two different
areas in the code that needed to be changed to remove the use of 8.3 names. Will be fixed soon.

-Rich