[Coco] DECB development under OS9

[Dave Philipsen]

I have a possible project that I'd like to get a little input on.  I 
would like to use NitrOS9 as my development platform for programs that 
will run under DECB.  The reason for this is that NitrOS9 is well suited 
in that it has plenty of disk space and several assembler options 
available.  It would be easy to include the headers inside of the source 
code for compatibility with the DECB LOADM format as I've already done 
this with a cross assembler under DOS/Windows.  I'm not really keen on 
the idea of having to develop on a PC, transfer the output file via 
drivewire to the CoCo, and test.

I have a CoCo3 with 512K and I have CoCoSDC that has disk images for 
booting NitrOS9 as well as images for DECB.  What I was thinking is that 
I could write a utility program that runs under NitrOS9 that would allow 
me to copy files back and forth to one of the DECB disk images on the 
CoCoSDC.  Maybe it has already been done.  Has anyone ever attempted 
this?  If not, is there anyone who would want to give me a little advice 
on how, theoretically, it might be done?

I see there is a low level driver for the cocosdc and I'm wondering how 
difficult it would be to mount a DECB disk image and access the image as 
another drive under NitrOS9.  I realize that because of the difference 
in disk format the drive would not be natively read/writeable from 
NitrOS9 but as long as all of the virtual sectors were accessible then I 
could write a program to access the data/programs in the DECB file 
system.  So I guess I'm asking whether it would be feasible to mount one 
or more DECB disk images on the CoCoSDC as virtual drives; /SD1, /SD2, etc.

This would allow me to write a program under NitrOS9, assemble it, copy 
the DECB format binary to the correct DECB image on the CoCoSDC, then 
reboot the computer and test the program out in DECB. Another idea I 
have which would be an add-on to this would be a way to actually compile 
a NitrOS9 C program and either trap or replace the system calls and have 
the program usable under DECB.  I know this is a bit of a stretch but it 
might be possible if only certain limited system calls were used from 
the C program.



Dave