[Coco] NitrOS-9 sc6551 driver

[Roger Taylor]

At 06:55 PM 4/1/2009, you wrote:
>On Apr 1, 2009, at 6:49 PM, Roger Taylor wrote:
>>How fun does this sound?  Right now I'm using the Rainbow IDE to
>>build an OS-9 floppy image with the 6551 stuff.  I hope to whip up
>
>You have a boot manager, cross hosted?
>
>You know, I think I need to check out this Rainbow IDE thing. I can
>run native Windows stuff on my Intel Mac and they mix with the normal
>floating windows of the Mac desktop (I can even click on a .rom on my
>desktop and it launches the VCC emulator and runs the ROM). Might be
>fun to check out.
>
>Roger, I have a few pics of your pak from the FEst. What is the ROM
>inside?
>
>http://www.disneyfans.com/photos/CoCoFests/Chicago2009/BluetoothRS232/index.htm


What's that DVD player thing next to the CoCo running my pak?  It 
looks like it's running a CoCo emulator?

Anyway, my pak has a modified copy of the stock Deluxe RS-232 Pak ROM 
in it.  The only thing I changed was the lowest baud rate to say "HI" 
and it uses 115200 bps now.  Using the ROM's terminal mode, a user 
can talk in English to the bluetooth module to change parameters and 
get information.

 >set baud 19200
ACK

 >set name COCO
ACK

 >get name
COCO

 >get address
00:0C:00:84:A4:81

etc. etc. Settings are retained until you change them or reset the pak.


As for cross development, I can't take full credit for the ability to 
make an OS-9 disk from Windows because I'm using os9.exe and 
os9asm.exe which are not my own tools.  However, I streamline the 
whole process by letting the IDE user tick some checkboxes here, some 
drop-down list boxes there, etc.  For instance, for my 6551 boot 
module, I just created a new project... added a new assembly file in 
the tabs, copied and pasted one of the NitrOS-9 boot module's source 
code as a template, in the left panel chose OS9 Assembler as the 
builder, typed boot_6551 as the output object filename, in the 
Virtual Disk box I clicked the + sign and chose "os9.exe" as the 
imaging tool.  I clicked Go and the boot module was assembled into an 
OS-9 virtual disk.  I went over to the CoCo, typed dir /x1 and there 
was the binary copy of the boot module.

If this sounds like fun, you should spend a rainy weekend playing 
around with the Rainbow IDE which does include a lot of these free 
tools in one package.  A lot of popular assemblers are preinstalled 
and ready to use.  my CCASM, Chet's CASM, Boisy's mamou which is just 
OS-9 asm in disguise, and many other cross assemblers for other 
CPUs.  Rainbow is not just a CoCo IDE. It caters to almost the entire 
spectrum of vintage computers.

You don't even have to know the CLI switches to do basic stuff.  Just 
choose what you want to do from a listbox like "Listing" or 
"Symbols", or for the output object you can just choose "8K ROM" and 
if the assembler supports those options, the IDE will create all the 
commands and run them.  You get to see all of this in the readout 
window as it's happening.

It's no Visual Studio by any means, but it's nice.

A few years ago I sold a copy to a Microsoft employee!!  I've got an 
e-mail from him as well but never got too much in his business when I 
replied back.



-- 
Roger Taylor

http://www.wordofthedayonline.com