[Coco] Booting OS9 on my CoCo 3

[Arthur Flexser]

Is it possible that you've configured OS-9 to expect a 40-track disk, but
that the floppy drive you hooked up is physically not capable of 40-track
operation? Some of the older RS drives could only handle something like 36
tracks.  The fast seeking could be the sound of the drive vainly trying to
access an upper track.

Art

On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 3:11 AM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:

> Ok, so it's been a REAL long time since I booted OS9 on my real CoCo 3
> from a floppy disk.  Like almost thirty years.  So I picked up a used FD501
> controller from eBay awhile back and I just now hooked up a 3.5" floppy to
> it.  I can format a floppy and I can save/load programs from it.  But when
> I try to boot an old disk (probably 30 yrs old) I get the familiar "OS9
> BOOT" screen and then the floppy does a seek at what sounds like a faster
> step rate and then it does nothing.  Frozen with "OS9 BOOT" on the screen
> and the floppy is still selected with the motor running.
>
> This is a very old boot disk that I labeled "OS9 Level II System Master
> with ramdisk".  My old setup was a CoCo 3 with 512K and a multipak and one
> of the old full-size floppy controllers and an RS232 Pak.  My new setup is
> a CoCo 3 with 128K, no MPI,  the FD501, and a 63C09.
>
> I've got some 5.25" OS9 disks too but I don't currently have a 5.25" drive
> so I'm hoping to get things worked out with the 3.5" drive. It may be that
> the floppy is just so old it's lost some of its retentivity but I just
> thought I'd put it out there to see if anyone has an idea.  Maybe I'm
> missing something obvious.  The FD501 does not seem to work at hi-speed.
> Could that be the problem?
>
> Dave
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>