[Coco] Min load on NitroOs9

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 28 April 2020 14:30:34 Barry Nelson wrote:

> >> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 12:10 PM Barry Nelson <
> >> barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com
> >> <mailto:barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> In theory, it would be possible to setup multiple NitrOS9 boot
> >> files, and switch between them by changing the pointer in the boot
> >> sector.
> >
> > Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 14:15:19 -0400
> > From: phil pt
> > To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Min load on NitroOs9
> >
> > Cool. How can this be done please using ezgen?
>
> It can’t be done using any existing utilities that I know of, you
> would have to edit the boot sector. But it would be possible to write
> a utility to do this.

Thats been done, many years ago. On my site in the sig is KRNL_2_DIR.b09, 
it creates a directory entry, and an fd for the track, which is then 
deletable. I wrote it in self defense after discovering that os9gen 
silently refuses to rewrite the boot sector if its already allocated. 

And because the module breakups into little pieces used up my system ram, 
format crashes, so I have been reduced to useing a used, formatted disk, 
and eraseing everything on it including the boot track in order to 
os9gen a new boot disk for what, close to 20 years now.  Takes all the 
fun out of working with the coco's.

That pain in the a$$ is whats drove me away from spending a lot of time 
on it and on to other projects, like cnc machinery.

2 megs of programming ram but not enough system ram to format a disk and 
no real docs on system ram so it maybe could be fixed. If anybody has a 
set of os9defs that describe the proper use of system ram for level 2, 
where it is etc, I'd love to have a copy. Every module needs $27 bytes 
of memory for the system to know about it, but where in the 64k address 
space does this $27 bytes live?  What surrounds it that would prevent 
its expansion into a 2nd 8k of ram?

Either that, or re-write format to allocate another 8k page of memory for 
its workspace. Currently its too dumb to check and see if it has enough 
memory to function so it just scribbles all over memory it doesn't own 
crashing the system.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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