[Coco] Need help using ram drive as default drive

[gene heskett]

On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 07:17:45 PM Aaron Wolfe did opine:

> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 3:11 PM, gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 02:58:14 PM Robert Gault did opine:
> >> gene heskett wrote:
> >> > <snip>
> >> > Tapping the reset button will not get you there because that reruns
> >> > the original track 34 still in memory, whose boot module points at
> >> > /dd which is likely an alias of /d0.
> >> > 
> >> > So I am stuck. Classic chicken and egg. Tap the reset, wrong boot
> >> > module in memory, use 'reboot' and there is no method to select the
> >> > ramdisk. <snip>
> >> > However, if the ramdisk is named /dd, and that stuff is copied to
> >> > the ramdisk, then the /dd/sys problem is nicely solved.
> >> > 
> >> > Am I seeing it correctly Robert, or do I have an error,
> >> > -ENOTENOUGHCOFFEE?
> >> 
> >> Not enough coffee :)
> >> 
> >> Gene, you are right that you can't get there from here. Boot from /d0
> >> and the wrong boot module will be in memory. That can only be changed
> >> with a utility like chboot by Alan DeKok, which must be somewhere on
> >> the Web. I have a copy (written for OS-9 not NitrOS-9) which can
> >> change in memory REL, BOOT, OS9P1, or a combination. I don't believe
> >> this has been rewritten for NitrOS-9.
> >> 
> >> The only other hope for a pure stock Coco system is to start a RAM
> >> disk under Disk Basic, populate it with NitrOS-9, and then boot from
> >> the RAM disk. Now if Ed is willing to buy a hard drive for the Coco
> >> or Roger's DrivePak, then floppies will not be required. Both the
> >> hard drive and DrivePak are silent and fast enough to satisfy a RAM
> >> disk user.
> > 
> > I'd vote for the drivepak. �I assume you are referring to Rogers
> > MicroSD pack? �But Roger is behind and its been removed from
> > coco3.com. :(
> 
> The Drivepak is nothing close to the speed of a ramdisk, in fact it
> struggles to keep up with a floppy disk in most performance metrics.
> You would think it would be faster, given that the medium the files
> are stored on certainly is, however all data is routed through a 6551
> uart on it's way from SD card to CoCo, causing the performance of the
> DrivePak to be actually worse than bitbanger drives and floppy drives
> in some situations.
> 
> -Aaron

Youch! That renders that solution in a different, considerably less 
favorable light.

Cheers, gene
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