[Coco] My coco hates me :-(

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 15 March 2009, Willard Goosey wrote:
>...But at least I've found out why.
>
>I've never had good luck with a hard drive on my CoCo.  First with an
>LR-Tech SASI drive, then with Glenside IDE.
>
>When it works, OS-9 on a hard drive is a thing of beauty.  That
>beauty, however, has always been tarnished for me by the fact that I
>always end up spending more time finding and fixing hard-drive
>screwups than getting anything interesting done.
>
>There were always plenty of excuses.  "It's overheating."  "The SASI
>to MFM board is dying."  "The IDE drive is dying."  "Something doesn't
>understand clustering." "The IDE drive doesn't meet the ATA spec."
>"The MPI is dying." Etc.
>
>Now, however, I may have found the real reason.  I was fighting this
>friday night, swapping paks in and out of the mpi, trying to get a
>usable configuration, when I tried booting up without the Deluxe
>RS-232 pak.  And that *worked*!
>
>Anybody have any guesses why and how a stock Tandy Deluxe RS-232 pak
>would interfere with a Glenside IDE board (addressed at FF70)?
>
>Willard

And where is that pack addressed?  I don't know where mine is ATM because I 
have moved it from its original address, else I wouldn't have to ask.

Or has bit rot played with the /t2 descriptor & crc checking is turned off?

I also have little knowledge if the glenside ide interface.

I recall that whatever address the rs-232 pack is at, it needs that one and 
the next 3 above it.  For easy decoding I usually pick a 0, 4, 8, or a C as 
the last nibble.

The other possibility that just came to mind is an IRQ clash, you may want to 
check that, the rs-232 pack should probably have a higher priority setting 
since the drive has a buffer while the rs-232 pack does not.  And obviously a 
different address for the IRQ service routine.  irqs, and of course xmode 
should be able to display this.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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