[Coco] Re: working with physical floppy drives under NitrOS-9 via DriveWire

[chadbh74]

   Your setup, or what you are trying to get to, is the same as my
   HDB-DOS/Drivewire/NitrOS9 configuration.  Except that my controller is
   a FD502, but that shouln't be an issue right?  After booting the VHD of
   NitrOS9 in Drivewire, I can access both of my real floppies just fine,
   you should too.

   Sent from my Galaxy Tab 4

   --------- Original Message ---------
   From: Chris Oliver
   To: coco at maltedmedia.com
   Date: Sun Oct 18 09:22:27 CDT 2015
   Subject: Re: [Coco] working with physical floppy drives under NitrOS-9
   via DriveWire
   All -- To clarify my use case:
   I want to be able to boot to NitrOS-9 and run it from DriveWire --
   while using my two physical floppy drives. (Basically running the OS
   from a virtual drive, while physically accessing the floppy drives tied
   to my 3029 controller.)
   Problem I'm having is chicken/egg I think. Currently I need to load
   HDB-DOS in order to DOS the NitrOS-9 image on DriveWire. Once DriveWire
   loads up, I believe it overwrites HDB-DOS (doesn't it?). And then I
   need a path to the physical floppies -- meaning I then have to switch
   over to slot 4 on the MPI (where the controller lives). After that
   switch to slot 4, doing things like directory listings and format
   commands (from NitrOS-9 via DriveWire to my physical /d0 drive) does
   cause the drive to spin up, and the read/seek head does attempt to do
   something (makes some very different sounds than normal, though) -- but
   all such commands end in error codes. A format of /d0, for example,
   gets to the stage of naming the disk before it dumps out with an error.
   Dir commands result in errors without even partial listings.
   So the real question is: Does NitrOS-9 -- running via DriveWire (not
   via a physical boot disk) - have the ability to access the physical
   floppy drives via the 3029 controller. And if so, how can you boot to
   the OS on DriveWire (which seems to require HDB-DOS), while at the same
   time providing access to the controller (which is tied to slot 4 in the
   MPI). And in a scheme like this -- which elements remain resident (vs.
   being overwritten by others)?
   Hope this helps explain it better -- I'm probably missing something
   obvious here. :)
   Thanks to all!
   Chris
   -----
   All,
   I leverage HDB-DOS (burned onto an eprom in slot 1 of the MPI) to DOS
   to the latest Coco1 NitrOS-9 disk image (that has been loaded into the
   Disk 0 slot in DriveWire). Loads up great. Can work with virtual drives
   (/X1, etc.) perfectly fine.
   So -- now I want to be able to access the physical floppies. I have the
   orig 3029 Tandy controller, with a pair of the orig Tandy floppy
   drives. Is there any way to run NitrOS-9 via DriveWire, and yet be able
   format and use physical floppies? Would be great if I wasn't restricted
   to virtual drives...
   Very curious -- let me know!
   Chris
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