[Coco] Formatting L.R. Tech Hard Drive in OS9 Level II

[Mark J. Blair]

I opened up the hard drive enclosure again to check all of the cables, in particular probing the ground pins with a continuity checker to verify correct orientation. I found that I had the drive MFM data cable plugged into the jack for drive 1 instead of drive 0. Fixing this did make a difference. With it in the wrong jack, the drive busy LED would stay on after spin up. With it in the right jack, the LED turns off after spin-up. I checked both drive cables and the SASI cable for correct orientation at both ends.

From Owlware hard drive basic, the "DRIVE P" command (which should park the drive) causes the hard drive LED to blink once before returning "HARD DISK ERROR". If the SASI cartridge is unplugged, this command will hang instead. So this is a good sign, because it suggests to me that the SASI cart is responding to bus access, it causes the Xebec controller to do something, and the Xebec controller does something with the hard drive. Maybe the Xebec controller is just unhappy because the drive doesn't have a low-level format that the Xebec board recognizes, since the drive appears to have been reformatted on a DOS PC clone?

With the data cable plugged in correctly, "format /hd" also behaves differently under OS9. I still get "ERROR #243", but now that's all that I get. With the MFM data cable in the wrong jack, I'd get that error plus invocation instructions for the format command. So, something changed!

So at this point, maybe my best bet is to figure out how to create Nitros9 disks to see if I can do a low-level format under there. There is one other thing I'd like to try, but can't: The sparse printed instructions that I have refer to a disk color basic program called OWLFMTR.BIN and suggest that it can format an unformatted disk. It's not clear whether it can do the low-level format vs. just a high level format, but it's a moot point anyway because I don't have the program. There is an "owlfmtr" on an OS9 disk labeled "owlbasic formatter", but I think that this one is a different but similarly named OS9 utility for creating virtual floppies on an OS9 hard disk partition which can then be accessed by the owlware hard disk basic.

I'd sure like to get my hands on that OWLFMTR.BIN program, but I haven't found it yet. There's an "Owl-DOS (Owl-Ware).zip" image at the TRS-80 Color COmputer Archive web page, but it appears to be the same disk that I already have, and that disk doesn't include OWLFMTR.BIN. Sigh!


> On Jan 10, 2016, at 19:22, Barry Nelson <barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com> wrote:
> 
> Here is a link to the SCSI System V2.2 manual. I do not know if this is the software you have, but it says this software works with the LR Tech controller:
> https://ia801709.us.archive.org/27/items/SCSI_System_v2.2_19xx_Randsoft/SCSI_System_v2.2_19xx_Randsoft_text.pdf

That does not appear to be related to the software that I have. It looks to me like something newer and more advanced.

> You could always format the drive using NitrOS9 and then install the OS9 level two software on it. That should work too.

That might be my best thing to try next. I need to figure out how to make Nitros9 disks. Looks like I need to dust off my brains and get drivewire set up again.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/