[Coco] Drive Wire strangeness

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 09 December 2013 01:12:18 Tim Fadden did opine:

> Reply's in-line.
> 
> On 12/8/2013 5:04 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
> > Tim Fadden wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> I have a strange one.
> >> Stock coco3 and multipak.  dw3 hdbdos rom in tandy controller and tc3
> >> scsi
> >> controller.
> >> 
> >> Ok  built a floppy boot to boot making  x0 as DD and tc3 drivers for
> >> the hard
> >> drive.  Every thing accessed as expected scsi disk and dw3 disks. I
> >> then copied
> >> over the system to the scsidisk.
> >> 
> >> I then used the same mb script but changed the dd device from x0 to
> >> s0 and
> >> booted of of that one.
> >> 
> >> Booted fine, and the hard drive works as expected, but when I try to
> >> access the
> >> S0 etc drives, I get a #221, module not found error.
> >> 
> >> I did an ident on the os9boot files for both, and all is good. also
> >> checked
> >> with mdir, and everything is there as expected.  also did a save on
> >> the dw3
> >> modules and did an ident and they are good.
> >> 
> >> What am I missing?
> >> 
> >> Also is there a way to make custom dw bootable .dsk files? Using the
> >> mb script
> >> and putting in /x0 to format does not work.
> >> 
> >> Tim
> > 
> > Tim,
> > 
> > Module not found #221 unfortunately does not tell you which module was
> > not found. The fact that your OS9Boot file contains what you expected,
> > does not mean it contains what is needed.
> > Likewise, creating a boot disk with a script that does not work, means
> > that you have modified the scripts to do what you thought was correct
> > but not necessarily what was needed. Ident tells you what is present,
> > not what should be present. :)
> > 
> > When you say something doesn't work, you need to include specifics.
> > What part of a process failed? What errors, if any, were reported?
> > Separate DW and OS-9 errors, indicating which is which.
> 
> I was specific.  Trying to access dw3 disks gives error #221.
> 
> Both boot floppy's are IDENTICAL except for the /DD device!
> As i said.  setting the /dd device to point to /x0(dw3 device) i can
> access both scsi and dw3 devices.
> Setting the /dd device to point to /s0(scsi disk) the dw3 devices cannot
> be accessed and give #221 error.
> 
> If something was missing from one boot floppy it would have to be also
> missing from the other!
> 
> Both boot floppy's are made from the same nitoros9 boot image.  So if
> one has bad content so does the other!
> 
> And as I said I examined both boot floppies and they are identical
> except for the /dd device.
> And all modules are in the same exact order on the os9boot file.
> 
> By the way I used image nos96809l2v030209cc  which as been around
> forever and stable.
> and I dsave'd the content of it to the hard drive, so the /dd contents
> are identical.
> 
> The tc3 drivers/devices came from the Cloud9 Superdriver disk, as they
> are not on the nitros9 dist as far as I can find.
> 
> I wasn't expecting it to be trouble-shot, just curious if similar
> symptoms have been observed by others.
> 
> Cheers :-)
> 
> Tim

1. All the tc^3 drivers are now back in nitros9.

2. There are quite a few variations of /dd.  My inclination is to have you 
make sure that the /dd you chose, was also matched by the driver it needs.
dmode -dd.dd that you used should extract the name of the hardware driver 
that particular /dd needs.  Perhaps that one is not in the os9boot file.

3. And do not forget that the boot module in the boottrack also needs to 
change according to the boot device, there are several of those, all named 
boot internally.  Some of those can be used out of character as I have used 
boot_scsi in a floppy boot, the dos command will load the floppies track 34 
ok, but when it hands off to the boot module to load the os9boot file, it 
reaches straight into the hard drive and boots whatever is at DD.BT in the 
LSN0 of the hard drive.  I used that trick when working on boot_scsi to 
make it match the docs, making floppy boots to test it without ripping up 
the then one and only working hard drive boot I had.
 
> > The only way to troubleshoot your problem is to examine your mb and bl
> > scripts to see exactly what you placed in the OS9Boot file. Since
> > there are some disks on the Sourceforge site with bad content, the
> > disk you used with scripts and modules plus the resulting boot disk
> > would be needed to determine what is on them.
> > 
> > I'd be happy to look at your scripts but don't have your tc3 hardware
> > to test the result. I could check an OS9Boot file to see if the
> > included modules look right.
> > 
> > Robert
> 
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Cheers, Gene
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