[Coco] Just learning OS-9 - Questions

[Bill Pierce]

Nick, Well said :-)
When I started on OS-9, I had a single FD-502 35trk drive. The standard Tandy/Microware level 1 boot disk worked fine. Then I found out that most 502s had double sided 40s living under the hood.... I learned how to patch a descriptor (pre dmode, level 1). One by one, I found patches for this, patches for that and I slowley began to understand the whole making a boot process. How to use cobbler and OS9Gen. Then the Coco 3 and Level 2 came out. More drivers and more patches, then more patches. It took me from 1984 to 1989 to learn boot making. With a single drive, my configuration was easy as far as drivers. It was all the patches and the "blob" fix in which modules had to be moved around to avoid crashing almost everytime you added a new module or changed the size of another.
By the time I started using Jeff's 1st Coco 3 emulator, I had become very proficient at boot making, then David Kiel's emulators, then Vcc.. I now make boots in minutes to do whatever I (or someone else) need.
But... I remember those frustrating days rebotting and rebuilding till I got it right. Over and over again.

 Personally, in the past 2 years I have helped at least 20 different people get their OS-9 boots going. Some knew nothing of OS-9, some were old hands, but had forgotten the process or just didn't know how to use the available 3rd party tools.
An easy to use editor with a few friendly, simple prompts and a good archive of all the current drivers and modules would be welcome to anyone trying to create a new boot from scratch.

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
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E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: nickma <nickma at optusnet.com.au>
To: CoCoList <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Mon, May 27, 2013 11:00 pm
Subject: [Coco] Just learning OS-9 - Questions


Basically, if a "newbie" wants to learn about OS-9 and decides to
generate a custom disk, he needs an easy "newbie" way to select the
modules and hit "GO" and out comes a fully configure and bootable OS-9
disk.

He should not have to go hunting for drives, editing bootlists etc

Some disk/s that contain all the OS-9 modules/driver/commands known to
mortal man, together in the one place and he picks and chooses via a
menu.

We can't assume everyone who tries OS-9 is going to be a "rocket
scientist" or "engineer". 

It's the difference between fixing an OS and *USING* an OS and however
"powerful" that OS is, it means nothing if most people can't use it
and produce software for it

(climbing down from soapbox)

That felt good!   :)

Nick

-----Original Message----- 
From: Brett Gordon  
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts  
Sent: Mon, May 27, 2013 7:27 pm 
Subject: Re: [Coco] Just learning OS-9 - Questions 

I'm not sure about installation, but my CoCoBoot project is moving
along, 
and will soon add the ability to install certain modules dynamically
at 
bootup ( via config file or keyboard )... and soon cobbled blobs of
OS9 
modules will be a thing of the past. I plan on making a menu/gui
driven 
wrapper for creating boot disks for os9. Maybe this could be extended 
toward installing os9 too. 

Brett
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