[Coco] Nitros9 on Keil

[Robert Gault]

Mark McDougall wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Apologies if this has been answered before, but I'm having no luck in
> getting OS9 Level 1 to boot in David Keil's Coco 2 emulator.
>
> I've downloaded nos96809l1v030209coco_40d_1.dsk and disk 2 from the
> sourceforge website.
>
> I've configured the emulator with a FD502DS controller. I'm assuming the
> 'DS' means double-sided?!? From the length of disk 1, it would appear to
> be double-sided.
>
> Typing "DOS" and hitting enter simply clears the screen and displays
> "OK". Typing "DIR" shows garbage.
>
> What am I missing here?
>
> FYI, my ultimate aim to is to install OS9 (Level 1) on a hard drive
> partition (to be used with a GlenSide-compatible IDE). I have no
> physical floppy drives for my Coco, so I'm hoping this can all be done
> on emulators. I'm open to any suggestions as to how this could more
> easily be achieved.
>
> TIA
> Regards,
>

Mark,

I have not carefully read this entire chain but am pretty sure I know what the 
problem is with the Keil emulator and the NitrOS-9 disks and that you have not 
yet been given the answer.

The disks released by the NitrOS-9 project are not necessarily full size disks. 
They are only as large as required to hold the necessary files. This causes 
problems with all emulators other than MESS.
MESS will recognize the .os9 extension and then get the disk format from track1 
sector1 of the OS-9 disk. All other emulators use a different method for 
determining disk format.

The Keil emulator uses both the JVC disk format and its own format. JVC requires 
a full size disk which if double sized must be 368,640 bytes for a double sided 
40 track disk. The Keil .dmk double 40 track disk will be 512,016 bytes.

The Keil Coco2 emulator most likely is not correctly reading the NitrOS-9 
distribution disks. You will need to jump through hoops to correct this problem.

Use the MESS imgtool or wimgtool to create two new 40 track double sided disks 
in the .dmk OS-9 format. Mount the NitrOS-9 distribution disk and one of the new 
disks in MESS, run OS-9, and BACKUP the distribution disk to the new .dsk disk.
The new disk should then boot into OS-9 in the Keil emulator. It did for me.