[Coco] Hard Drive Problems

[Frederick D Provoncha]

On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 06:29:46 -0500 Mark Marlette <mmarlett at isd.net>
writes:
> At 10:24 PM 6/3/2004 -0600, you wrote:
> 
> Fred,
> 
> Sounds like you are not running the mb_hdb_dd script. You have the 
> wrong 
> boot loader. Then did you run LINK after you made the boot disk and 
> backed 
> it up to drive 255? I would pick drive 254 then try it out, then 
> when it is 
> working then go back to 255. Nice to always to be able to boot and 
> go back.
> 
> If you can boot to your drive via floppy, then do a dcheck /h0, see 
> if your 
> system is intact. Then you will know if your HD is fine.
> 
> I'm including the script in case you have a different version.
> 
> Substitute 255 with 254 to have a backup version till you have a 
> working 
> copy. OR just boot from the floppy you are making till you have it 
> down. 
> Should work the first time.....
> 
> echo This script creates an HDB-DOS based boot disk
> echo that contains SuperSCSI drivers.
> echo This boot disk will boot directly to SCSI ID 0
> echo when copied to an HDB-DOS virtual disk and
> echo properly linked with LINK.BAS.
> echo
> echo Please insert a blank floppy into /d0
> pause and press a key to start the process.
> echo
> echo STEP 1: Formatting the floppy disk.
> format /d0 1 '35' "OS-9 HDB-DOS Boot" r
> echo
> echo * Step 2: Create a custom boot track
> merge ../MODULES/BOOTTRACK/rel_80 
> ..../MODULES/SUPERSCSI/L2/boot_id0_tc3_l2 
> ../MODULES/BOOTTRACK/kernel>bttemp
> echo *
> echo * Step 3: Create the bootfile and boot track
> os9gen #32k /d0 -t=bttemp<../BOOTLISTS/superscsi_hard.bl
> del bttemp
> echo
> echo The process is complete. You now have a bootable
> echo floppy disk in /d0. Be sure to copy it to your
> echo virtual disk on your hard drive under HDB-DOS and
> echo link to it with LINK.BAS.
> 
> Once this is done from HDB-DOS, RESET the COCO, let the system boot 
> to 
> HDB-DOS, type DRIVEOFF, type BACKUP 0 to 255. Then RUN"LINK:4(This 
> is where 
> Cloud-9 places then HDB-DOS distyribution disk)
> 
> DRIVE is 255........follow the prompts.....
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mark
> Cloud-9

Hi Mark,

I booted NitrOS-9 using an all-floppy boot that contained the /h0
descriptor. I then tried your suggestion of running 'dcheck /h0'. The
system hung, which is exactly what happened when I tried a 'dir /h0'
which I described in my last message. Whenever NitrOS-9 tries looking for
the hard drive for any reason it can't seem to find it and it hangs. This
only applies to the NitrOS-9 partition on the hard drive. The RGB-DOS
partition works just fine and I have full access to it.

As for the 'mb_hdb_dd' script, I'm not running the script yet because I'm
still running my system under an outdated version of NitrOS. That's
because I'm still having problems transferring the latest version of
NitrOS over to a floppy that the Coco can read. I posted a couple
messages about that a couple of weeks ago. I should probably give you
guys an update on that endeavor:

If you recall, I reported that I could not get the Coco to read a 3 1/2"
boot disk created using DSKINI and the most-recent downloaded .dsk image
of NitrOS. I was getting "Error 249 - Wrong Type". I tried Rodney
Hamilton's suggestion of using DMODE to change the DNS setting in the /d1
drive descriptor to DNS=3. I then tried "DIR /d1" and lo and behold, I
got a directory listing of the root directory of /d1! My euphoria was
short-lived however, because when I tried doing directory listings of the
sub-directories CMDS, SYS, and DEFS, the DEFS directory was fine but I
got an "Error 214" with the CMDS directory and an "Error 247" with the
SYS directory. It seems to me that Rodney was on the right track. After
all, before I couldn't read the disk at all, and at least now I can DIR
the root directory successfully and the DEFS directory. But the disk is
still basically unuseable. I have also tried Rodney's suggestion of
alternatively patching LSN0 to change the DD.FMT value from $07 to $03
with pretty-much the same results as the DMODE fix. Anyone else have any
ideas?

Fred Provoncha
Stansbury Park, UT