[Coco] My coco hates me :-(

[Willard Goosey]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 02:13:40PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 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.

Stock, ff68-ff6b
> 
> Or has bit rot played with the /t2 descriptor & crc checking is turned off?

No, I just checked, all kernal modules in memory have good crcs.

> 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.

Humm.  I'm not sure the IDE board even uses an interrupt.  It doesn't
show up in the listing from irqs.  After iniz'ing t2, /T2 has priority
0A.  The only strange thing is that irqs reports the port as being
FF69.

The only weirdnes about the RS-232 pak *I* know of is that I've got a
smartwatch in its ROM socket.  I'm not using the smartwatch clock
module, though, just the regular software clock.  So, the only time
the smartwatch gets poked is when I run a seperate program to read
it.  Those utilities are from the Glenside Y2K patch set, and as far
as I know they properly restore the MPI settings?

Maybe the serial pak's DC-to-DC power converter is dying, and pulling
enough +5 to flake out everything else on the MPI bus?  And that shows
up as hard-drive problems because that's the device that gets used
more than any other?  

This seems like a possibility to me because, when I put the rs-232 pak
back in slot 0, my CoCo couldn't even read its boot disk to boot
NitrOS-9  until I'd removed the Speech/Sound pak from slot 1...
Possibly because the floppy control (fd502 shorty, stock) was getting
starved for power? 

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
  -- R.E. Howard