[Coco] Nitros9 on Keil

[Robert Gault]

Mark McDougall wrote:
> On 13/09/2010 11:05 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
>
>> The disks released by the NitrOS-9 project are not necessarily full size
>> disks. They are only as large as required to hold the necessary files.
>> This
>> causes problems with all emulators other than MESS.
>
> Yes. I fixed the disk by padding the extra bytes and still Keil wouldn't
> boot the disk.
>
>> Use the MESS imgtool or wimgtool to create two new 40 track double sided
>> disks in the .dmk OS-9 format. Mount the NitrOS-9 distribution disk
>> and one
>> of the new disks in MESS, run OS-9, and BACKUP the distribution disk
>> to the
>> new .dsk disk.
>> The new disk should then boot into OS-9 in the Keil emulator. It did
>> for me.
>
> LittleJohn's father (John) has done this for me already!
>
> Thanks for taking the time to explain.
>
> BTW Do you know if there's any way of getting Nitros9 onto a hard drive
> partition without using the SuperDriver? Or is the SuperDriver basically
> IDE support for Nitros9?
>
> Regards,
>

The alternative system for hard drive support is the Ken-Ton scsi interface and 
accompanying software. Cloud-9 is now handling sales of an equivalent 
controller, having acquired the rights to the system.
NitrOS-9 includes a driver for hard drives using the Ken-Ton/Cloud-9 interface.

If you want to try this on an emulator, both MESS and VCC can use RGBDOS which 
is my modification of the original RGBDOS supplied with the Ken-Ton hardware. 
Cloud-9 sells HDBDOS which is essentially the same code but for actual hardware.
With this package, you can partition a scsi hard drive into OS-9 and Basic 
sections. OS-9 will boot from the hard drive without needing any floppies. The 
boot disk will reside in the Basic partition of the hard drive on one of 256 
separate 35 track Basic disks.

Since RGBDOS/HDBDOS is for a scsi hard drive, you will need the IDE package for 
IDE hard drives.