[Coco] nitros9 questions

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings nitros9 fans; (the <devel at nitros9.org> mailing list is apparently a 
black hole now, 2 posts in 2 days have not come back)

I have finally managed to build a new boot disk from the latest release 
that "almost" works.

1. It boots fine, but after sysgo puts it on the scsi hard drive, /dd, it gets 
a tummy ache over the xmode commands in my /dd/startup script, because 
xmode's syntax has been changed.

One surprise was the init module has somehow become correct for a 2 megabyte 
system as mfree reports the correct amount of memory, and a dir /r0 steals a 
megabyte for an empty ramdisk.  I had installed mine instead of rammer so the 
formatting is automatic when accessed.

2. That (1. above) led to the next discovery as I was going to edit the 
startup file and fix the xmode syntax.  My std editor for the last nearly 20 
years has been the vi conversion of tsedit.  And I still use vim here on this 
linux box for almost everything.  So I'm used to it.

However:

vi startup
 error 234 - non-existent module

and it even works just fine if I'm cx'd and cd'd to the 80 track distribution 
disk in /d1 after booting the original boot Mark put on drive 128 several 
years ago.

Either way, from /d0 or from the scsi hard drive, it still loads the same 
group of utils as both boots actually use the exact same startup file.

Problem #3, I have a dmp-120 printer hooked up, and included the bitbanger 
port drivers to feed it.  Its dip switches are set for 1200 baud, and I have 
xmoded /p for a bau=3 which is supposed to be 1200 baud, and the printer 
prints, but it prints full lines of IBM style garbage gfx chars regardless of 
what baud rate I set.  I'm inclined to think the character generator in the 
printer has gone by-by, or is stuck in some sort of an IBM style gfx mode, 
but powerdowns have not changed anything.  I have an old brother daisy wheel, 
but no idea if I can still get its film ribbons now, but I'll drag it out & 
check.  If that works, I might drag the old xerox 1650-ro in from the shed 
and see if it works as I do have some ribbons for it.  It is about 3x faster 
than the brother. :)

But if someone can tell me why vi won't run when booted to the latest nitros9, 
I'd be suitably grateful.  That would be the most important item to fix 
first, because its the tool to fix just about everything else.

Surely the "edit" that is on the distro disk isn't the same busted, throw away 
3 lines of text & crashomatic POS it was 20 years ago, but I have NDI how to 
run it, is there a current, valid doc/tutorial file someplace I can download?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
To err is human, to forgive unusual.