[Coco] Unusual problem

[Christopher R. Hawks]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2013 17:56:15 -0400 (EDT)
Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:

> 
> Bill,
> I think I see your problem right off the bat.
> While others are talking hardware and solder problems, no one seemed
> to notice you said you were trying to boot from a 40 trk disk image.
> From RSDOS (or hdbdos), a 40 trk image will not work. The boot track
> (track 34) is in the wrong place and rsdos will not find it as it is
> treating the disk image as  a 35 trk image. I have tried and tried to
> get someone on the Nitros9 team to make the Nitros9 images in a 35
> trk disk image as well as the other sizes/formats. This would solve
> many, many problems people are having trying to boot from the
> repository images. If you make a 35trk disk image from your working
> copy then take that into the office and try it, I think you'll find
> it works. Also, if you are using the 40 trk image from the repo,
> there are NO 40trk DW images in the repo. All the 40 trk images are
> for standard (real) drives which again, will NOT work in a 35 trk
> disk system. So if you stick a 40trk image in dw4, it will start to
> boot then look to the floppy for it's bootfile then fail. 
> 
> All in all, use a DW boot disk from the repo and cobbler a 35 trk
> disk while in that system. Copy the CMDS (all will not fit, only
> important ones like grfdrv, shell etc.) and SYS as well as sysgo and
> startup to that disk and I think you'll find it works.

	What?? You mean all these years (30) I actually havn't been
able to boot 40 and 80 track disks with DECB???

	You better look again. Unless you are a Dragon disk, the boot
track is _ALWAYS_ on track 34 whether it's a 35, 40, 80 track
drive.(Oh, and it's _ALWAYS_ on the first side.) I haven't had a 35
track single sided drive in years. And I've been booting OS9 for 3
decades.


Christopher R. Hawks
HAWKSoft
-- 
To attract a vegetarian, make a noise like a wounded vegetable.