[Coco] Question May not be in right area

[Robert Gault]

John Orwen wrote:
> This may not be the proper area for this question but I am not sure where to
> post it to.
>

This is not the best place for general MESS questions but for Coco MESS 
questions you have come to the right place. For general MESS questions try
http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1

> I have never used the MESS emulator before.
> I downloaded the X64 latest package from the www.mess.org and unzipped it to a
> MESS directory on my hard drive.
>

You will want to create or at least stock some other MESS sub-directories.
roms\
      coco
      cocoe
      coco2
      coco2b
      coco3
      coco3h
cfg\
      This will be auto-filled.
snap\
      If you want to take screen snapshots.
      coco
      etc.
ini\
      This will be auto-filled.

> IS there an easy way to configure it for a COCO3, DECB running HDBDOS or is
> there an online tutorial for setting it up to emulate a COCO3 with HDBDOS or
> Nitros9 ?
>

Getting a third party DOS to work with MESS is tricky. Success depends on the 
specific version of MESS in use. Old versions of MESS could be told to ignore 
ROMs that had "bad" CRCs but the more recent ones can barf on third part DOS. 
I'd suggest using v1.444 or maybe v1.36. V1.36 has the checkbox to ignore "bad" 
ROMs. With v1.444 you may need to add an entry to the hash file coco_cart.xml.

You can't just take an scsi or ide DOS and drop it into MESS. You must change 
the hard drive I/O commands to match those used by MESS. Luckily for you, I 
released a version of RGBDOS which will work with MESS. RGBDOS is the 
predecessor of HDBDOS and you won't notice any differences. If you can't find 
this ROM with an Internet search, contact me directly by e-mail.
The current version of MESS permits mounting two .vhd hard drives. Older 
versions of RGBDOS won't access the second hard drive. I can supply a newer 
version of RGBDOS that will work with two hard drives.

NitrOS-9 presents the same problems that DOS do. The drivers that talk to hard 
drives must conform to the MESS format. The NitrOS-9 releases do not contain the 
needed Boot nor emudsk.dr even though they are in the NitrOS-9 source code at 
Sourceforge. If you have trouble obtaining these I can supply them.

There is an old package at
http://aaronwolfe.com/robert.gault/Coco/Downloads/Downloads.htm
RGBDOS that explains how to set up a .vhd drive and install NitrOS-9. Some of 
the info is dated but again you can contact me directly.

==============
As an aside, the VCC emulator already has my older RGBDOS ROM built in and has a 
.vhd image with an old version of NitrOS-9 installed. It can be found in several 
location, one of which is
http://www.coco4.com/vcc/download.shtml