[Coco] Emulation Bummer Action (or lack thereof)

[Roger Merchberger]

Well, I installed FreeDOS in a virtual machine, figured out how to get a 
copy of the CoCo3 ROM in a format that JV's emulator likes, got 
everything "working," and...

no dice. :-(

The best I could get was the startup screen, then it would lock the 
virtual PC (Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn't reboot the system) - virtual hard 
reset was the only way to regain control of the OS.

DSKINI.exe, Port.exe & the VGA test program all work fine, however.

So, I thought: "Maybe it's something DOS specific..." so I found my 
MS-DOS 6.22 disks, was able to get them imaged, and installed "real" 
MS-DOS on another virtual computer. (The installer doesn't work well, 
you have to fdisk & format the drive manually). Copied the files over 
(thankfully JV's emulator fits on a floppy) and...

same thing. :-((

I tinkered with some of the HIMEM/EMM386 settings & other stuff, and 
also changed the interface types in VB to things as old as I could 
(PIIX3 IDE inteface, etc.), but again, the best I could do was the 
welcome screen & the system would lock.

It's not the CoCo3 ROM image going south, I tried the included OS-9 boot 
ROM also, and didn't get any farther; it's possibly an "emulated memory" 
issue or somesuch...

Short of creating a real MSDOS install on a real PC (which I may very 
well try, but not this weekend, anyway) anyone better at VirtualBox than 
I am have any clues they could send my way? ;-) Or am I forging new 
ground here...

Does anyone here still run JV's emulator at all?

Thanks,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger