[Coco] Newbie NitrOS-9 questions

[Stephen Pereira]

Hi Bill,

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!!

I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to get back to wherever I was months ago when I found out that NitrOS-9 cannot do very much of anything on a stock 128K CoCo 3.  Since then, I’ve acquired the books that I mentioned, and I figured that I was ready to get going when I ran into this roadblock.

Thanks so very much for answering with this very valuable information.  I haven’t found any references to Drivewire drives being /X0, /X1, /X2, … and I thought that I was losing my mind (again).

Your patience with me, and your thoughtful assistance is tremendously appreciated!

smp
--
Stephen M. Pereira
Bedford, NH  03110
KB1SXE


> On Feb 21, 2015, at 3:56 PM, Bill Pierce via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Stephen, try dir /X1.
> "/d0" - "/d3" are real floppy disk descriptors, not DW4 descriptors. 
> The DW descriptors are "/X0", "/X1", "/X2", & "/X3" and if you're booting from a DW disk, then "/X0" was probably replaced with "/DD".
> If you are trying to "format" a floppy disk image using the DW, then it will try to format it as a large hard drive. These descriptors are set for some oddball size (??).
> To make it format as a floppy, you must either use "dmode" and change the descriptor or set the parameters for format to see the proper size drive.
> On my Coco 3 system, I have all my "/Xx" desciptors set for the same size that VCC origially used ($5A000) so I can move VHDs between my Coco and VCC as I use both the Coco and Vcc for software developement and switch VHDs quite often.
> 
> Just so you'll know.. The naming convention used by NitrOS9 for various types of drives are:
> /D0, /D1, /D2, /D3 - real (or emulated) floppy disk drives
> /H0, /H1 - Emulator hard drives
> /I0, /I1, /Ih - Superdriver IDE, Glenside IDE
> /S0, /S1, /S2, /S3, /S4, /S5, /S6, /Sh - TC^3, Superdriver SCSI
> /X0, /X1, /X2, /X3 - DriveWire drives
> /SD0, /SD1 - CocoSDC drive
> /R0 - Ramdisk
> 
> /DD - is for "default drive" which can be assigned to any of the above which is determined by the type system you have and which bootdisk you use.
> 
> There are other "special" cases, but those are the main ones used in the NitrOS9 repository.
> 
> 
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
> 
> 
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Pereira <spereira1952 at comcast.net>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Sat, Feb 21, 2015 3:06 pm
> Subject: [Coco] Newbie NitrOS-9 questions
> 
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I apologize up front for these newbie questions…
> 
> Now that I have my tricked-out CoCo 3 system, I want to try again with NitrOS-9.
> 
> My CoCo system is a CoCo 3 with a 6309 processor and the Cloud-9 Triad 512K RAM 
> upgrade.  I am using an HDB-DOS cartridge, and I have Drivewire 4 for my storage 
> system.
> 
> As before with my previous stock CoCo 3 (now my backup system) I can boot 
> NitrOS-9.  Once in NitrOS-9, I can issue the mfree command and I get:
> 
> A    14000    1BFFF      4       32k
> F    1E000    7BFFF    2F    376k
> 
> Total:                           32    400k
> 
> So, it looks like NitrOS-9 is seeing my 512K RAM just fine.
> 
> I can issue the cputype command, and I get:
> 
> CPU: 6309, running in 6809 mode.
> 
> Here come the newbie questions:
> 
> My prompt looks like this:   (Term:02)/DD:
> 
> I can issue a dir command and get the directory listing.  I can issue a dir 
> ./cmds  command, and see the contents of the cmds sub-directory.  HOWEVER, when 
> I try to issue a dir /d1 or dir /D1 or dir /d2 or …  I get error messages like 
> #216 or #240
> 
> I have both The Complete Rainbow Guide to OS-9 and The Complete Rainbow Guide to 
> OS-9 Level II books, and they both start off with looking at different disk 
> drives and formatting blank disks.  And here I am getting error messages when I 
> attempt to look at virtual disk drives on my Drivewire.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?  I am using the same NitrOS-9 boot disk that I was using 
> on my 6809 CoCo 3.  Is that it?  I thought that the 6309 would use the 6809 code 
> fine.
> 
> Sorry for being a cry-baby with this.  Thanks very much for listening.
> 
> smp
> --
> Stephen M. Pereira
> Bedford, NH  03110
> KB1SXE
> 
> 
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