[Coco] Wcreate in OS-9 L2

[George Ramsower]

From: "Robert Gault"
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Wcreate in OS-9 L2


> George Ramsower wrote:
>> When I run wcreate it accesses the disk for something that sometimes 
>> returns a CRC error.
>>
>> What is wcreate doing with the disk. I figured it might be using grvdrv, 
>> so I make a new copy of that in the cmds dir.
>>
>> Actually, I think it's the disk drive as this only occurs when the 
>> machine is cold. I'll have to try another drive to find ouy, but I was 
>> curious as to what wcreate is doing with the disk drive while creating 
>> the windows.
>>
>> George
>>
>
> You should post the exact command sequence you are using.
>
> In general, wcreate does not access a disk for anything. However, wcreate 
> is not normally in memory so if you issue a wcreate command, wcreate must 
> be loaded from a disk.
> Try loading wcreate before issuing any wcreate commands and see if you 
> still get disk activity.

 I should have told how I was using it. It's in the startup file as follows:

echo Creating Windows
wcreate -z
/w1 -s=2 0 0 80 24 0 2 2
/w2 -s=2 0 0 80 24 0 2 2
/w3 -s=2 0 0 80 24 0 2 2
/w4 -s=2 0 0 80 24 0 2 2

 The line to echo always works. I put that in to see if it got that far.
 It echos and then the disk acts like it loads wcreate, then begins 
seeking... slowly, then exits the startup file with no reports of errors.
 Usually, I just kill the one background task and type /d0/startup and it 
USUALLY works. When it doesn't, it reports the CRC error after the echo 
Creating Windows line.

 Since the startup file doesn't have a CRC, this means that the wcreate is 
giving the CRC error. Tonight, when I booted, the same thing happened. So I 
called the startup file as usual with:
/d0/startup
 And for the first time, I got an error 216. Did a dir and error 216 
resulted. However, I ran "cold" and the system did reset to RSBASIC. I 
figure maybe there's something not right in the structure of the FAT?  A 
reboot worked this time, but I still had to re-run the startup file

 The next step was to do a single disk backup using the same disk for source 
and destination. I won't know until I reboot tomorrow when the coco is 
TOTALLY cold if this helped.
  This annoyance began a few months ago and I expected the problem was the 
power supply and bad cap/s. When that wire on the Y-cable came loose a few 
weeks ago and we all brain worked over that one was when I began seriously 
trying to find a bad cap. BTW, this is my CNC coco machine.

  I still think it's the floppy drive. Won't know until I do the isolation 
trick or, if the backup cleaned it up.

 I'm using the Disto SC II no-halt controller.


George