[Coco] DECB development under OS9

[L. Curtis Boyle]

There was a utility called “Rusty” that Alan Dekok did for the older, commercial versions of NitrOS-9, that allowed you to specify an RSDOS BIN file (stored on your OS9 style hard drive), that would load the file, then reboot the computer in DECB mode and automatically execute it from RAM. It wouldn’t let you use multiple BIN files, or BASIC programs, from what I remember (it was meant as having a way to have all of one’s old, single binary game files on your hard drive, and launch them directly from NitrOS-9 so you didn’t need tons of floppies or separate (then only) RGBDOS partitions. That might be of use to you for testing, eliminating the RSDOS -PUT step until you either need multiple files for your program, or are ready with the “final” product and want to test it in the raw DECB environment. 
I am not sure if it is in the repo or not, although it looks like I don’t have it on the Ease of Use, so I will have to rectify that as long as the current versions of NitrOS-9 haven’t broken it.

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



> On May 14, 2018, at 12:52 AM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
> 
> I tried both the RSDOS and the HRSDOS utilities.  The syntax of the two seemed pretty similar. It seems that perhaps there is a special setup needed for HRSDOS as it would not do what I wanted it to do "out of the box".  To be fair I did not go through all of the documentation although it seems it was more specifically designed for a SCSI HD with multiple RSDOS partitions.
> 
> The RSDOS utilty, however, seemed to work as expected.  Using 'rsdos -dir /sd1' yielded a directory listing of the disk image I mounted to drive 1 before booting OS9.  Using 'rsdos -put README.TXT /dd/readme.txt' copied the OS9 file to the RSDOS disk image.  When I rebooted to DECB and mounted the drive I found the file that I had copied there from OS9.
> 
> So the ability to move files back and forth between OS9 and DECB is already available in OS9 and has been for some time.  And it seems my idea of developing an m/l program under OS9 for DECB will work. It would be a fairly simple matter to write a script that would assemble the source file and copy the binary output file to the DECB image on /sd1.  Then just reboot the computer and test it out.  I might have to look into how to 'AUTOEXEC' a file on startup with the CoCoSDC and then I could just write a program that would present a menu for either booting into OS9 with the DECB partition mounted on drive 1 or just booting DECB with the DECB partition mounted to drive 0.  (Just so I don't have to manually mount the drives every time I reboot.)
> 
> Perhaps Robert may chime in to clarify how I might use HRSDOS to accomplish this as well.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> On 5/11/2018 5:13 PM, L. Curtis Boyle wrote:
>> I think the RSDOS utility will do this already, so you could set that up in a script to copy to/from a DECB disk image directly.
>> 
>> L. Curtis Boyle
>> curtisboyle at sasktel.net
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 11, 2018, at 4:02 PM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
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