[Coco] Need help using ram drive as default drive

[gene heskett]

On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 11:25:20 PM Vanderberg Family did opine:

> Thanks for responding.
> 
> I seem to have misled all of you.  I will try again.
> 
> I am not in a position to buy a hard drive controller so I am faking it
> in a very small way with ramdisk.
> 
> Goal - ramdisk as default drive so help and error files work quickly
> enough to be of use and /d0 not required as it is my work disk (80t
> 720k).  /d1 is mostly used to quickly load ramdisk with prebuilt ram
> disk images.  At this time I routinely use 3 images (from diff
> floppies).  #1=CMDS, SYS, et.,  #2=Basic09 stuff I don't want wasting
> space on ram drive normally and #3=Game & App stuff when diff config is
> required.  So in essence I have a ram-based hard drive which can be
> quickly reloaded with the appropriate image.  Normally of course it
> contains CMDS, SYS, etc.  Also provides a way to retain some data
> through boot for use in another config.  Reminds me of one I used years
> ago with small scsi drives mounted in removable trays - swap a drive &
> it is a whole diff machine.
> 
> There have been several answers assuming requirements beyond what I am
> trying to do (interesting ideas, though). On cold boot I format ram
> drive and restore the CMDS-SYS image from /d1, chx /r0/cmds and i'm
> hot. On warm boot I only need to chx /r0 and there we are.
> This all works fine and saves me a lot of frustration.  The only flaw is
> not having helpmsg & errmsg - Boo.

That is fixable if you have disk space enough to afford to have duplicate 
files laying about.  Copy the helpmsg and errmsg files to the ramdisk as 
is.  But copy the help and error utils from a separate directory containing 
copies that you have fixed with dEd so they are then using /r0/sys instead 
of /dd/sys to look for the *msg files.

> Mention was made of actually booting
> to ram disk for warm boots (Would love to if possible - call that phase
> 2). Someone also suggested prepopulating ramdisk in rsdos (OK, way
> beyond my skills and maybe overkill? like the idea, though).  However,
> just using ram drive as default, not necessarily boot, is all I really
> need.  Sounds easy.  Not for me - see below.
> 
> Also, to answer, I use cobbler only to reflect dmoded changes to the
> current boot disk.  Sysgo in memory crept in when I started over with
> stock standard.bl without quite enough attention (too much coffee I am
> afraid) Using os9gen and your standard.bl (with mods for my hardware,
> of course) to create boot disk - works fine - boots fine as above.
> Problem comes in when I comment /ddd0 and enable /ddr0 in standard.bl.
> - making only that change, My boot fails with >>>>> Pipe Clock Clock2
> i2xtot*g

That is a change, (you posted a *j previously) look up the ascii value for 
a lowercase g, add 128 and that is the error you have encountered, doing 
that in my rusty & aged wet ram says the g=103+128=241, and that comes back 
as a 'Sector Error'.

Humm, so my next question is: are the /r0.dd and /ddr0.dd descriptors you 
are using an exact match except for the internal name and crc?
 
> I tried the above stock and also after copying /r0_192k.dd to
> /ddr0_192k.dd and using ded to modify the R0 reference to DD (44 C4 -
> correct?)

Yes.

> to try to avoid the expected /ddr0 choke on the preexisting
> /r0 with diff format.  Did this make sense to you?

Post a dump of the /ddr0.dd you are trying to use, please.

> In other words, I am trying to change a working standard.bl to use the
> /ddr0 descriptor from the distrib disk. So, my question is what needs
> to be done in addition to selecting the /ddr0 descriptor in order to
> enable ram drive as default?  If I am thinking correctly, that change
> will achieve all I have described.  THEN I can think about /r0 as a
> boot device on warm boots - another question for another day.

A warm boot from the ramdisk, unless you can figure out how to swap the 
boot module that is in memory, cannot be done.  However you can make 
everything run from /r0 by editing sysgo and fixing the help and error 
files I alluded to above.

I assume we are talking about a half meg coco3 here, which will eventually 
run out of /r0 to add stuff to.  I have a 2 meg disto kit in mine that I 
have used at 1.7 megs, but those haven't been on fleabay anytime I know of, 
fleabay itself is too new.
 
> And again I thank you and all others for the help.
> Ed
> 
[snip]

Cheers, gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
UNIX is many things to many people, but it's never been everything to 
anybody.