[Coco] NitrOS-9 L3 Code and Disk Images

[Bill Pierce]

Tormod, I sent you a private email concerning Nitros9 level 3 yesterday. I think it got screwed in the process so I'll send it again.
And yes, there was a working Level 3 at one point, but Alan took it with him when he left us. Unless Kip had a copy from Alan's old website, I don't see how he could've run it. It was only available for Nitros9 L2 v1.2.2.
The level 3 that Alan was working on was based on code from Nitros9 L2 v1.22 (yes, that old), which was still being sold by Northern Exposure at the time. They at one point announced they "may" provide the Level 3 upgrade if enough people showed interest. I don't think they ever actually released it. Alan did have it available on his website later.
 
 
The Level 3 code in the repo is missing 4 important files and WILL NOT run without them.
These files are "IOMan.L3", "OS9P1.L3" (now named Krn), "OS9p2.L3" (now named KrnP2), and "Clock.L3" (now split into 2 modules).
These files have gone through many changes since Nitros9 l2 v1.22 and the original L3 files will have to be disassembled and the newer modules reworked to do what these modules intended for L3.
Again... Level 3 WILL NOT WORK without these modules, and I'm NOT referring to the current build of these modules as Alan did special versions of each one. They were not the same modules as in Nitros9 l2 v1.2.2.
 
 
I think Kip may have been running a release of Nitros9 L2 v3.0.0 as I've seen it in several archives labeled as "L3" which is incorrect. It's just L2 v3.0.0,
 

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Tormod Volden <lists.tormod at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thu, Oct 23, 2014 4:32 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] NitrOS-9 L3 Code and Disk Images


On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 3:38 AM, Kip Koon wrote:
> Hi Tormod!
>
> Are there any plans for reviving the NitrOS-9 Level-3 Code?

Hi Kip!

I believe Gene has such plans :)

I don't know of anyone else. Boisy put this stuff in the repo some
years ago, but I think the original level3 work from Alan DeKok is
decades old.

Other than that the only plans that I know anyone has or had for
NitrOS-9 is here: http://sourceforge.net/p/nitros9/feature-requests/

Personally I would like to see it ported to more systems. There is a
crowd of 6809 lovers outside the CoCo/Dragon scene, which I am sure
you have seen for instance on the N8VEM list. Getting them involved
and using NitrOS-9 as a unifying base would be great. NitrOS-9 offers
the a well defined API to write programs that can run on a CoCo or a
homebrew 6809 system.

Generally I think we need more new software running on NitrOS-9, more
than we need new features in NitrOS-9. But I am not so much into the
use of NitrOS-9 so what do I know. Of course a lot of people think the
operating system itself is more interesting to develop than programs
for it. And I could fit in there, I guess :)

>
> How do I put in my own changes into my local copy of the NitrOS-9 Repository
> without the Build process removing said changes every time I try to assemble
> the source code and make the disks?  I have some ideas I want to play with
> including cleaning up some scripts, adding other scripts that I think are
> needed or at least would be interesting and correcting at least one error in
> a module.

You can make your own local branch. See "hg help branch" for the short
story, but read the mercurial documentation and tutorials for better
explanations. I posted some of these here:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.tandy.coco/75439

>
> Another reason why I'm asking is I have a friend named Bas De Jong who is
> running a homebrew 68020 VME system he made using wirewrap methods that runs
> OS-9 68K 2.3 and he wants to add Windowing capabilities to His OS-9
> Operating system.
>
> He asked me some questions about the windowing system in NitrOS-9 and I told
> him as far as I know the default distro disks have no built-in GUI.  Then I
> remembered the Multivue disks.  I tried the Multivue 6309 DW and Multivue
> 6809 DW disks in Drivewire with VCC 1.43Beta and neither of them booted.  I
> also tried to boot the Multivue 6309 and Multivue 6809 disks in VCC Drive 0
> with the Drive off Basic command and neither of these booted.  If I remember
> correctly,  Multivue is the GUI application, but I cannot check it out to
> get copies of the screen for Bas.
>
> Are the Multivue disks broken or did I make a mistake in my configuration in
> Drivewire and/or VCC?

I don't know. Maybe Bill Pierce knows, since he's the most heavy user
of NitrOS-9 GUI systems that I know of.

>
> I tested a version of OS-9 Level 3 once quite a while back and it seemed to
> work fine, but I didn't have a Coco mouse then so I did not pursue it any
> further.  Now that I have VCC 1.43beta I'm going to pull it out again and
> see if it still boots.  Any help would be most appreciated.  Thanks in
> advance.  Take care my friends.

So there was a OS-9 Level 3? Interesting. Maybe someone can pitch in
with some history and background. I have considered it more like
vaporware, from reading the NitrOS-9 FAQ.

Cheers,
Tormod

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