Improvements to Combo Disk Images

[kiwisincebirth]

This was extracted from another discussion, and would be something actioned in future

COMBO (Disk Image) - Add Z3PLUS (full os), either at end as a new slice -or- replace wordstar with Z3PLUS to keep combo image size the same. Main reason ensure the combo imgae has the complete set of OS images

Comments below by @wwarthen

There are actually 2 OSes that are not in the Combo image. In addition to Z3PLUS, there is also QDOS. I don't want to change the slice layout of the combo image at this point -- too many people expect the current layout. The layout may need to change someday, but that would be a very big deal and I would need to be convinced that the new layout would not change for a very long time.

So, I guess the additional OSes could be added to the end of the existing combo image slices. However, this has issues as well:

Spencer distributes CF Cards that are 64MB. Adding slices to the combo image will cause it to not fit. This is not a real problem because any slices exceeding the end of the media will just be unusable. However, I believe I will get a huge number of support queries when the tools that copy images to media issue ugly warnings/errors. Unfortunately, people don't read the documentation, especially if they have already done this before and expect it to work the same.

Some people have started using slices after the 6 slices of the combo image for their own data. They have the expectation that appying a new combo image will only overlay the first 6 slices. I have occasionally suggested that people start their own slices at 32 to avoid this in the future, but many have not done this. Applying a larger combo image will destroy their existing data if they are not careful.

I completely understand that these two issues can easily be worked around by reading documentation and/or use of COPYSL. The problem is not reading documentation.

I am overdue to generate a new stable release of RomWBW (v3.5). Since quite a few people have already started using the pre-release v3.5, I am inclined to move this change to v3.6. If we make a change to the combo disk layout, it would be best to do it in conjunction with this change (v3.6).