[Coco] Booting OS9 on my CoCo 3

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 08 August 2017 03:11:22 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 don't think you can run a ramdisk with only 128k, rsbasic uses the 2nd 
64k for its newer gfx.

> 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?

Never had a problem with that Dave. A 512k memory upgradefrom Mark might 
be the answer.

> Dave


Cheers, Gene Heskett
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