[Coco] OS-9 Floppy / Printer configuration?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:46 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I'm hearing X-Mode or T-Mode for the printer configuration and D-Mode
> for the floppy configuration?  Is this right?
>

tmode is for configuring your terminal, xmode for SCF devices like the
printer port, dmode for RBF devices like disk drives.  tmode and xmode
overlap in that terminals are usually (always?) SCF devices, but tmode
doesn't take an argument for what device to use, it just configures
the current terminal.

Bob makes a good point in that since you're on level 1, things may be
different.  I believe xmode works the same in both, but I don't have a
real L1 disk to try it with.  Sounds like using dmode won't cut it in
L1, you'll have to get a special device module.  Another reason to
seriously consider using NitrOS9 I think.

-Aaron


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
> Behalf Of James Jones
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 10:26 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] OS-9 Floppy / Printer configuration?
>
> On 07/25/2010 10:04 PM, Chad H wrote:
>> Here's the issue I'm working on right now: trying to configure it to take
>> advantage of the printer and floppy drive setup I have attached.  I have a
>> FD-502 with dual 5.25 double-sided 360k drives with a modified RS-DOS
> EPROM
>> that allows the top unit to be drives 0/1 and the bottom 2/3.  How do I
>> configure OS-9 to take advantage of the other sides of the drives, either
> as
>> /d2, /d3, etc. or by making /d0 and /d1 double-sided devices.
> There's a utility out there called dmode that lets you modify RBF device
> descriptor modules (the ones in memory; you'll want to save them out to
> a file). If you don't have that, then you'll have to either create one
> with an assembler or use a program that will let you modify a file
> containing the device descriptors (and update the module CRCs). In
> either case, you will then want to recreate a boot file with the
> modified device descriptors.
>>    Also, a
>> person on this list was gracious enough to sell me a serial-to-parallel
>> converter that allows me to print to a old HP DeskJet 540 printer rather
>> well.  I've coded some RS-DOS BASIC programs to work properly with it
> (i.e.
>> setting 1200baud and CRLF) but is there a way to set such parameters in
>> OS/9?  If memory serves, the printer is /P device, right?  I've seen a
>> couple of OS-9 applications allow the setting of the baud rate inside the
>> application setup, but not much other settings.   Only way I could get
> these
>> to printt down a page instead of all text on the first line was to run a
>> RS-DOS BASIC initialization program to initialize the printer and then go
>> into the OS-9 apps and print.
>>
> For that you'll use tmode (the program that inspired dmode and its
> name), which modifies SCF flavored device descriptors.
>
>     James Jones
>
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