[Coco] 5-1/4″ DS DD 80 track drive, 300 RPM mod

[Robert Gault]

Kandur wrote:
> Found the Vcc 1.42 Emulator's manual,
> was able to run programs from .dsk images and
> from the real floppy drive, A as well.
> Loaded the Preinstalled Hard disk image Nitros9 Ver 3.2.8
> into HD drive 0, but can't find the instructions how to start it.
>

The hard drive on the VCC site is split, one part for OS-9 the other Disk Basic. 
The .vhd image is compatible with that used with MESS and the JVC emulators. The 
first part of the drive $5A000 bytes is OS-9. The second part of the .vhd image 
is 256 35-track Disk Basic virtual drives.

You need to configure VCC using its menu. Cartridge\FD-502 permits selection of 
DOS and that should be RGB DOS. You will want to check Persistent Disk Images, 
probably Clock at 0xFF50-51, and OverClock Disk Drive. If you have fdrawcmd.sys 
install on the PC, you can have VCC talk to real floppies rather than virtual ones.
Cartridge\MPI Config should show FD-502 in slot4 Hard Drive+ Cloud9 RTC in slot3 
with the slot select set to 4.
Cartridge\HD Drive 0 is where you select the .vhd image which should be the one 
from the VCC site for starters.

The RGBDOS ROM is essentially identical to HDBDOS and HDBDOS is derived from 
RGBDOS. By default at turn on, You will be in Disk Basic mode and reading the 
virtual drive0 on the .vhd image.
The .vhd image does not come with an AUTOEXEC.BAS file on drive0 but it should. 
That program will automatically run and typically should be a menu program that 
permits selection of other programs.
Enter   DIR250TO255   to see what is on these drives. I believe drive254 
contains RGBDOS tools and drive255 is a NitrOS-9 boot drive. If that is what you 
see, DOS255  will start NitrOS-9 running. You should then see
NitrOS-9/6309 Level 2 V3.2.8
and
Built 05/01/2010 for VCC 1.41

If all you intend is to use NitrOS-9, you could place a one line AUTOEXEC.BAS 
file on drive0.
10 DOS255
NitrOS-9 will boot as soon as you start VCC.

I'd suggest you look for the VCC 1.43beta version as that will work with Drivewire4.

Robert