[Coco] Need help using ram drive as default drive

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 3:11 PM, gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 02:58:14 PM Robert Gault did opine:
>
>> gene heskett wrote:
>> > <snip>
>> > Tapping the reset button will not get you there because that reruns
>> > the original track 34 still in memory, whose boot module points at
>> > /dd which is likely an alias of /d0.
>> >
>> > So I am stuck. Classic chicken and egg. Tap the reset, wrong boot
>> > module in memory, use 'reboot' and there is no method to select the
>> > ramdisk. <snip>
>> > However, if the ramdisk is named /dd, and that stuff is copied to the
>> > ramdisk, then the /dd/sys problem is nicely solved.
>> >
>> > Am I seeing it correctly Robert, or do I have an error,
>> > -ENOTENOUGHCOFFEE?
>>
>> Not enough coffee :)
>>
>> Gene, you are right that you can't get there from here. Boot from /d0
>> and the wrong boot module will be in memory. That can only be changed
>> with a utility like chboot by Alan DeKok, which must be somewhere on
>> the Web. I have a copy (written for OS-9 not NitrOS-9) which can change
>> in memory REL, BOOT, OS9P1, or a combination. I don't believe this has
>> been rewritten for NitrOS-9.
>>
>> The only other hope for a pure stock Coco system is to start a RAM disk
>> under Disk Basic, populate it with NitrOS-9, and then boot from the RAM
>> disk. Now if Ed is willing to buy a hard drive for the Coco or Roger's
>> DrivePak, then floppies will not be required. Both the hard drive and
>> DrivePak are silent and fast enough to satisfy a RAM disk user.
>>
> I'd vote for the drivepak.  I assume you are referring to Rogers MicroSD
> pack?  But Roger is behind and its been removed from coco3.com. :(

The Drivepak is nothing close to the speed of a ramdisk, in fact it
struggles to keep up with a floppy disk in most performance metrics.
You would think it would be faster, given that the medium the files
are stored on certainly is, however all data is routed through a 6551
uart on it's way from SD card to CoCo, causing the performance of the
DrivePak to be actually worse than bitbanger drives and floppy drives
in some situations.

-Aaron


>
> Cheers, gene
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