[Coco] Just learning OS-9 - Questions

[L. Curtis Boyle]

I did try to make a minimal boot disk that would fit on 40 track single sided (I think I pointed it out to you earlier... it's where the new Gshell is), that was basically the NitrOS9 kernal, with Tandy floppy controller drivers and the various graphics drivers. That was meant to be a minimalist boot, but it is far outdated now (it was from 2.01 days). I think someone should make an equivalent to that using the current version - a bootable, minimal disk, with a decent bootfile editor (EZGen or KwikGen) on it, and then a separate disk image(s) with drivers, organized by type and manufacturer (ex. Hard_Drives\Burke, etc.). I do believe that later versions of XMODE and DMODE had options for changing descriptor files directly on disk (not just in memory), so one could use that to set the proper # of tracks, baud rates, etc. depending on what hardware they actually have.
Unfortunately, it would have been necessary to have the sub-directory structure, as several manufacturers used the same driver names for completely different drivers (Boisy can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that duplicate driver names between different hardware has been cleaned up in modern versions).

Having a "wrapper install" program to handle all of this would greatly help, of course. I was always hoping Wes would have gotten around to it back in the day, but he was busy with the manual, and Kwikzap/Kwikgen. :)

(Bill and I, of course, were having way too much fun with NitrOS-9 itself, and then the TC-9's, to bother with such "trivial" things... ;) )

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



On May 27, 2013, at 9:01 PM, nickma at optusnet.com.au wrote:

> Where can I BUY a copy of Frank's book... Mastering OS-9 on the Tandy
> Color Computer 3.
> 
> Frank's done a great job with this and I'd like to support his
> efforts.
> 
> Nick
> 
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