[Coco] nitros9 questions

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 11 May 2008, Willard Goosey wrote:
>On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 12:29:39PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> vi startup
>>  error 234 - non-existent module
>
>Ummm... Do you have the VRN drivers and descriptors in your os9boot?
>That is exactly the error you get if you try to run the VI device
>descriptor as a program module....
>
Yes, that is what I found to be the case.  Like you, the VRN stuff has been 
part of my bootfile since forever it seems.

>You'd think it would be more like wrong type module, but...

Well, IMNSHO, a device descriptor should not be an executable, and until this 
last couple of releases, has never before been attempted.  A device 
descriptor is a lookup table, nothing more.  It might be fixable with vfy, 
but I haven't tested the idea.  The Att/Rev byte in the header really should 
call them all 'data'.

>I know this, since I habitually include VRN in all my bootdisks.  IMHO
>no OS is complete without a null device. ;-)

I share that opinion.

>Otherwise it must be a 6309 thing, 'cause tsedit runs fine on 6809
>nitros.

I may try it by linking or renaming vi to vim, although there's no way it 
could be confused with the real vim.  Still, its the best small editor we 
have.  The only one where you can "vi #56k bigfile', everything else that I 
have either forces you to less than 40k (edit), or even ignores it and makes 
you page through the file 16k at a time(ds).  I used to use xed & xprint back 
in the day, but they were about as buggy as the standalone edit, & when level 
2 came out, they didn't run on the coco3.  To be fair to ved & vprint, I 
don't have them, so I can't judge them.

It had been so long since I used edit that I had to read up about it in the 
level 2 manual. :(


>Willard



-- 
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)
Flon's Law:
	There is not now, and never will be, a language in
	which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.