[Coco] Trying to boot nitros-9 in mess (linux)

[Tormod Volden]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 3:34 AM, Robert Gault wrote:
> Matías Gutiérrez wrote:
>>
>> Thanks a lot Tormod! That look pretty promising.
>> I've just downloaded toolshed and build it. Now I have this fistful of
>> files:

For anyone else reading along, there is no need to build toolshed
yourself. The download area has a dwdos zip file with all the dwdos
flavours prebuilt.

>> I presume .wav are the audio files, just for curiosity's sake what are
>> those .rom and .trk?

The .rom files are for burning to a cartridge ROM. The _mb rom files
are for replacing the BASIC ROMs, if you never use BASIC and would
like to save the cartridge port/MPI slot/controller ROM socket.

>> Now I going to research how to boot nitros-9 from dw once dwdos is loaded
>> in ram.

Just have the NitrOS-9 disk image (dw flavour) loaded into the first
slot on the DriveWire server and type:

EXEC

>
> Take a good look at dw3dos.asm. :) The comments at the start of the file
> explain for what ROM and TRK files are.
> If you are not familiar with the DOS track on a Coco disk, that is track-34
> (0-34). When you want to start OS-9/NitrOS-9, you will either use the DOS
> command or an ml program to load and execute the code on track-34.

Yes, the TRK files are for floppies, so of less use, and of no use in
this case. The advantage of having DWDOS on the floppy boot track,
compared to using a NitrOS-9 boot floppy, is that you load even the
kernel and boot track over DriveWire, so no need to rewrite floppies
after updating any of NitrOS-9.

>
> Since you don't have a floppy drive, you want the .wav file. Play it on a PC
> and feed it into the Coco cassette port or if you have a tape recorder save
> the file on tape and send that to the Coco cassette input.
> That will load the dw3dos code into memory and permit you to read disk
> images mounted in Drivewire on the PC. You will also have the DOS command
> with which to boot NitrOS-9 from a disk mounted in Drivewire.

To clarify, DWDOS is equivalent to the DOS command in disk basic
(except of course it only boots over DriveWire). It is not a DOS, and
it doesn't let you read anything else on the disk images on the
DriveWire server (other than their boot tracks).

Tormod