[Coco] SyQuest Procedures

[Mark Marlette]

Rich,

SuperDriver is where you want to be. Anyone that owns wit will sa it 
is by far the best driver ever written for the CoCo. Boisy did a 
great job on this. We had quite a few heated discussions over it. :) 
He agrees it was the correct direction and even pushed the NitrOS-9 
for a change.


well my 1963 model brain doesn't recall what the procedure was on 
that driver. My eject? The driver doesn't cache so all writes are performed.

Coming to the fest we can discuss this if you would like.

You do have to very careful on the upgrade. The descriptors changed 
between the TC^3 and SuperDriver. Since you aren't formatting you 
should be fine. Just make SURE that you turn off the drive query bit 
in the TYP, bit7 as I recall. Should be an $81 for SCSI ID 0, no auto 
query. If this bit is on and you FORMAT the drive ever it will ask 
the drive for the  geometry of the drive and format accordingly. This 
will OVERWRITE your HDB-DOS partition.
Not desired.

Hopefully that helps.

Regards,

Mark



At 3/30/2008 08:28 PM, you wrote:

>Hi Mark:
>
>Thank you getting beack to me. You told me how to dismount a SyQuest 
>cartridge
>before, but I can not recall the details. If you will tell me now, I'll have
>it in writing (your reply) and will keep it in a safer place other than my
>1947 model brain 8-).
> >
> > Please provide more information on your system.
> >
> > What NitrOS-9 driver are you using? TC^3 or SuperDriver? What version
> > of NitrOS-9?
> >
>
>
>Looking inside the MODULES/TC3 folders, it would appear that I am using the
>TC3 driver. There is a RBF folder within it that has another TC3 folder which
>contains a DESCRIPTOR folder full of... you guessed it, what seem to be
>descriptors. Also at the MODULES/TC3 level there are two other folders, CLOCK
>and Y2K. BTW, inside the DESCRIPTOR folder, I see two references to /h0
>devices, but nothing for /h1. One of the /h0 descriptors could be for a
>SyQuest device because it as a 120mb parameter in it. Its exact text
>reads "h0_540_part1_120mb_ff74.dd".
>
>This system has not been changed since I bought the hard-drive and controller
>from you at a Fest. As I said, I could not free up much time to do anything
>with it until recently.
>
>There is a SUPERDRV folder in the root /h0 directory, but it is empty.
>
>/h0 is my hard drive
>
>/h1 also points to the hard drive at the moment (at least it seems to).
>
>You are correct, there is a HDB-DOS partition which I do not want to trash.
>
>I do own a SUPERDRIVER 2.0 system disk, but I am recluctant to try installing
>anything until I am positive I can recover if I do something bad. I tried
>booting from the backup I made of it, but it fails. The Original fails too
>(both with the same messages). I think that is because they are DSDD disks
>while the boot is looking for SSDD, just a guess on my part. I can read both
>disks just fine from the NitrOS9v2.00 system installed on my hard drive. I
>have to dmode the /d0 to sid=2 first though.
>
> > What device is /h0? /h1=SyQuest?
> >
>That would be my goal.
>
> > I'm guessing that you are using the TC^3 driver by your references.
> > That driver has been retired for many years and has been replaced
> > with SuperDriver.
> >
>That rigs a bell
>
> > You do have to be careful. From your description there is a partition
> > for HDB-DOS. NitrOS-9 will always reside at the start of the disk.
> > The HDB-DOS offset(partition) will reside at $d938-3b in the HDB-DOS
> > version of DECB.
>
>--
>Coco mailing list
>Coco at maltedmedia.com
>http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG.
>Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.1/1349 - Release Date: 
>3/29/2008 5:02 PM
-------------- next part --------------


No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.1/1349 - Release Date: 3/29/2008 5:02 PM