[Coco] Glenside IDE drivers problematic?

[Boisy G. Pitre]

On May 26, 2004, at 1:07 PM, <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:

> I got a disk with the drivers (and source, and shareware EZGen) from 
> the Glenside IDE booth at the CoCoFest.
>
> The lock up is one of those where the system freezes, but you can 
> still press CLEAR (but not type).  I don't have extra windows open so 
> I just see the cursor flicker when I press clear, but an earlier 
> lockup with a window open let me switch windows but not type.

This is symptomatic of the driver doing a busy-wait.  Interrupts are 
still enabled, so pressing CLEAR or any key will cause that key to be 
buffered, but since the driver is spin-locking, no other process gets a 
chance to run, and thus you don't see what you type.

I suspect the driver is waiting on some condition that isn't happening 
with the CF.  A sure fire way to eliminate your interface as a 
possibility is to try the exact same setup with a Glenside IDE 
interface (but you would then need a CF-adapter...)

> I am now able to get a hang just by doing a read-only ccheck (B&B file 
> check util) from the IDE/CF card, so it does seem related to either 
> the IDE drivers or something going wrong in my IDE interface.  I 
> should see if I ever get a hang from HDB-DOS
>
> About the CD/DVD(!) support:  Does this let me burn an RBF drive image 
> to CD and read it on the CoCo?
>
Yes, you can use Toast on your Mac to burn an RBF image onto a CD, and 
then put that CD into an IDE CD-ROM drive attached to your CoCo running 
NitrOS-9.  It is absolutely working with the two drives that I have, 
and I intend to commandeer more CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives for testing.

Boisy