[Coco] Booting OS9 on my CoCo 3

[Robert Gault]

Dave Philipsen 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
>
>

Dave,
Hard to say where the problem is but I'd bet it is the 128k vs 512k memory.

The label on the disk says RamDisk so the boot file could be trying to access more memory than is 
available. Not sure what that will do to the boot process but would expect a problem.

Do you have or can you make a boot disk that does not use a ramdisk or can you create a copy of one 
of the OS-9 release disks?

Robert