[Coco] NitrOS-9 L3 Code and Disk Images

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 26 October 2014 13:40:43 Bill Pierce via Coco did opine
And Gene did reply:
> Gene, that's awsome! I never noticed te L3 conditionals in the sources.
> But I think you're still going to have to modify "krn" and possibly
> "krnp2". According to Alan's doc, OS9P1 (now krn) looks for the
> "NITROS9" module. Here is an excerp from the doc:
> 
> ---
> 
>   When booting OS-9, the startup routine inOS9p1 calls the Boot module
> to load inthe OS9Boot file.  OS9p1 then looks for amodule named
> 'NitrOS9 as theFIRST module of the OS9Boot file.  If itexists, that
> module is called BEFOREverifying the OS9Boot file.
> 
>   The NitrOS9 module allocates memory, andmoves the SCF modules (up to
> the_end module) into 'SCF local memory', and verifies the modules.  The
> sameprocedure is followed for RBF modules, and when I get the chance
> later, forPipeMan and SBF modules.
> 
>   Extra memory is allocated in 16k chunks, andmapped into address $2000
> to$5FFF of the system map.  An 'smap' willshow you that this memory is
> allocated.
> 
>   IOMan intercepts EVERY system call, and EVERYrequest/return system
> call. Anymodule inside 'local memory' asking for system RAM gets
> allocated RAMfrom that local memory.  Any module in'system global
> memory' asking for systemRAM gets allocated RAM from the global memory
> pool.
> 
> ---
> 
> 
> From what I'm seeing, for the special modules to load, krn needs to
> know about them. I have copies of the original L3 "os9p1.l3",
> "os9p2.l3", "clock.l3", and "ioman.l3". Since you are more
> knowledgable about how the system files work, you may be able to
> disassemble the os9p1 and os9p2 to see what was done. I also have
> another disk image with "ALL" the L3 files on it but it seems to have
> gotten messed up somehow or in a different format. I plan to use a hex
> editor to extract the files as the files seem to be intact, just the
> "empty space" padding which is usually "0" on an OS9 disk was somehow
> replaced with all "0xE5"s.

Nope, if it was zero padded, the assembler did it.  Formatted os9 disks 
are filled with $e5e5e5's until they have been written to once.  That was 
true in 1985 and its still true.

> I have several disk images like this...
> they are also one byte shorter than a normal 40trk, dsdd disk image.
> As I said, I think I can extract the files. it has all the various
> "clock" incarnations as well as the other L3 files and may even have
> an intact bootfile.
>
I don't think its a problem Bill. I think you will find, in the srcs for 
krn, some similar conditionals to insert that level3 code.
> 
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
> 
> 
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Cheers, Gene Heskett
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