[Coco] RGB Dos DECB disks accessed by NitrOS-9 on VCC

[Robert Gault]

Stephen H. Fischer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been asked a question about NitrOS-9 on VCC accessing RGB Dos DECB disks.
>
> I punted with this answer:
>
>> An expert on "RGB Dos" which I am not would need to answer the question if any
>> of the 255 DECB floppies can be seen by NitrOS-9.
>
> Second question, I am assuming the code is still in the driver to allow a
> NitrOS-9 program to read / write DECB disks.
>
> What is the name of the current software program and where is the documentation
> for it. I have used about four different programs in the past, each tied to a
> specific OS-9 version.
>
> If you wish, you can respond in another thread I have created:
>
> NitrOS-9 on VCC Advanced Topics
>
> http://www.tandycoco.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=146
>
> TIA
>
> SHF
>

There is a program, RSDOS, which I think reads Disk Basic disks under OS-9.
ftp://www.rtsi.com/OS9/OS9_6X09/APPS/
I don't think there is a similar program in the NitrOS-9 distribution.

However, that is not sufficient to access the Basic drives on a .vhd disk. You 
would need one of two things. 1) To read OS-9 disks in the BASIC section of a 
.vhd drive you would need a driver and descriptor for the VCC emulator that 
knows the LSN offset for the Basic section and will translate on the fly Basic 
drive numbers into OS-9 logical sector numbers. 2) To read Disk Basic disks in 
the BASIC section, you need a program like RSDOS that incorporates the 
requirements listed in 1).

I have written a program that reads Disk Basic disks, HRSDOS, patterned after 
RSDOS. It will work with both floppies and .vhd images or similar real hardware.
http://aaronwolfe.com/robert.gault/Coco/Sales/Flyer.htm
I've also written a driver and descriptor that can read OS-9 disks in the BASIC 
section of a .vhd drive. I think that the Cloud-9 software for OS-9 has that 
capability but can't find a reference to it.