[Coco] Primer for NitrOS-9?

[gene heskett]

On Sunday, December 04, 2011 12:44:54 AM Robert Hermanek did opine:

> I started with DECB longer ago then I care to admit.  I got into
> assembly/etc rather quickly when the basic interpreter became too
> clumsy.  Now I keep my coco's running due to nostagia and affection,
> and am still rather deep into assembly.  But the one thing I've never
> had the time for is figuring out where to start with OS-9 or NitrOS-9. 
> Unlike the good ol' days when I was a kid in the basement with a coco,
> now it's a hobby with rather less time available when other things come
> up... question:  Is there a basic starting point or newbie guide for
> NitrOS-9?  I'm very familar with the coco, assembly, DECB, and still
> have no idea really on where to start with os-9, and from what I hear,
> it offers an awful lot... seriously, I don't even know how to make
> disks or boot it up.
> 
> I've been active in the past on the coco3.com website as SC, but have
> decided now to get on this listserv, seems a little more straight to
> the point.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Robert Hermanek
> 
First, welcome home.

Second, without a copy of the docs that came with the two versions of os9, 
one for the first 2 coco's and a level two for the coco3's, for reference, 
I'll have to admit the going is slow because this forest has a lot of 
trees.

There has been a concerted effort to get most of the coco oriented 
magazines that were publish back in the day, into digital formats that can 
be downloaded, but because of copyright concerns, not a huge amount of the 
manuals was quoted in those publications.  Some of the module specs were, 
but I do not have a list of the issues they may be in.

Today, its possible those os manuals have also been digitized, so if 
someone here has an index and the URL's to download those, please speak up.

IMO, you need both level 1 and level 2 docs to get the full set, mainly 
because the assembler stuff is only in the level one package, while the 
best set of module definitions is in the level 2 manuals.  Level 1 is about 
2" thick in the original package, and level 2 is about 3.5" thick in the 
original versions, and they go into details that I have never seen before, 
or since, the most complete education on how an OS works, even better than 
the amigados docs were back in that day.

The process of converting it to nitros9 has resulted in its being 
noticeably faster because a few bugs were found and fixed when we started 
digging into it after the 6309 became available.  But that is yet another 
story, making your coco a bit faster yet.

Today, we rarely assemble new modules on the coco itself, because the 
'Toolshed' kit you can get from the OpenCoCo site runs on 
linux/macs/windows about 500 times faster than it would run on the coco, 
but the result can be downloaded to the coco and used to build new boot 
disks to do about anything you want to do.  Nitros9 itself is still on 
sourceforge, and the 'master' .dsk disk images are downloadable but can 
actually be used to build a boot disk on the coco's hardware using 
drivewire without even downloading the images since drivewire can do a 'net 
mount', making the fact that the disk image you are accessing is actually 
on a hard drive someplace in the sourceforge forest completely transparent 
once a drivewire capable first boot has been built.  Or you can download 
the dsk for your hardware, copy it to a floppy (sometimes it needs 2 disks) 
and it then is the master disk that can even be booted so that a custom 
disk can be made using scripts that are in the disk image.  Lots of ways to 
proceed.  There are others too that I don't have, Roger Taylor has written 
some neat stuff too.

A drivewire mounted remote disk image can be quite a bit larger than any 
floppy format ever used.  It is for obvious reasons, read-only.  OTOH, you 
can create your own drivewire mountable disk images on your own pc that are 
fully read/write as long as you, the user, have permissions to access them.  
Restrictions there are OS dependent, but if you know your OS, that is not a 
problem.

Feel free to ask what may be dumb questions, because some of us have been 
there, done that. We think we have kicked all the tires. :) Above all, 
don't get discouraged, ask, and somebody will probably help.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
"In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's 
not
there if you want to keep writing good code."  -- Karl Lehenbauer