[Coco] I've got DriveWire 4 installed

Wayne Campbell asa.rand at gmail.com
Mon May 29 12:42:03 EDT 2017


Oh, and FWIW, my vhd is OS-9 only, not hdbdos and OS-9. Will this impact
using the dd descriptor for the vhd?

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Wayne Campbell <asa.rand at gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember this from when I had my real CoCo2 and 3. It was stated in the
> manuals that the boot file needed to have everything in it. I just wanted
> to see if it worked the way Robert described first. Now I need to see if I
> can add the emudsk driver and descriptors to the boot file, or am I going
> to have to create a new boot file due to ordering constraints. I haven't
> made a custom boot in many many moons. Thanks for the reminder, Bill.
>
>
> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Bill Pierce via Coco <
> coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
>
>> Wayne, first, it is never a good idea to load drivers "after" the boot
>> file. This advise comes from many OS9 users past and present. The OS9
>> manual even states as much. This meaning loading temp drivers after you've
>> booted into NitrOS9. Yes, it works, but yes, it can eventually fail. It's
>> ok for testing or a quick fix for something temporary, but not for regular
>> use. When OS9 boots, memory is allocated to the drivers and their
>> descriptors in a permanent location in system memory. When you load them
>> later instead, these locations are just temp locations in user memory and
>> can easily be corrupted by other software being loaded. Not to mention they
>> use much more system memory when loaded later.
>> The best solution is to have the drivers in the bootfile.
>>
>> 2nd, the emudsk driver is 100 times faster than the DW drivers so I would
>> use /h0 as /dd. This gives you the fastest system drive possible. I've
>> found through tests that the "TCP" port in DW4 for emulators is actually
>> slower than the Serial port transfers used by a real Coco and DW4.
>>
>> 3rd, the emudsk driver and descriptors ARE in the repo under
>> "3rdparty/drivers/emudsk". If you build your own NitrOS9 disks, these
>> drivers are assembled, but NOT put on any dsk image. The assembled files
>> can be found in the above folder after doing a complete build of the
>> repository. Hopefully I will get a chance soon to create the patches need
>> to have the repo build disk images for the emulators. This has been needed
>> for a very long time.
>>
>> In my "Starter Kits" for VCC & DW4, the VHDs are setup so that the system
>> starts it's boot from DW4, then finishes on the native VCC HD using /h0 as
>> /dd. This makes VCC the system drive, leaving you 4 data drives which can
>> be swapped out at will.
>> These Starter Kit packages are "turnkey" systems in that after
>> installation, the only setup required is to mount the 2 VHDs (one in DW4,
>> on in VCC). NitrOS9 is already setup and ready to run.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bill Pierce
>> "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to
>> slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
>>
>> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
>> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
>> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>>
>> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Wayne Campbell <asa.rand at gmail.com>
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Sun, May 28, 2017 11:14 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] I've got DriveWire 4 installed
>>
>> Thank you Bill, Barry and Robert. I already have the emudsk disk image,
>> soI just merged the H0.dd and EmuDsk.dr files together and put them in
>> theCMDS directory on the boot disk in DW. It works, so now I have access
>> tothe vhd image.On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 6:21 AM, Robert Gault <
>> robert.gault at att.net> wrote:> Wayne Campbell wrote:>>> Thanks, Robert.
>> That's done, so now how do I access my harddisk image? I>> did a mdir and
>> see that /h0 and emudsk are not there. I'm guessing this>> means I have to
>> build a custom boot?>>>>> Wayne,>> Yes, unfortunately there probably aren't
>> many default .vhds for mounting> on VCC which will access DW4 disks nor
>> disks for DW4 that once booted have> access to the default VCC hard drives.
>> So, you will need to build a custom> boot file for best/safest access to
>> both DW drives and VCC hard drives.>> There is one other thing you can try
>> which may work but is not the best> approach. :) You can merge emudsk and
>> h0 into a single file in your CMDS> directory. Set the merged file for
>> execution ex.> attr VCCvhd e pe> and after booting from the DW4 disk, load
>> the merged file however it is> named.> You should then be able to read the
>> OS-9 partition of the .vhd mounted on> VCC.>> Now EmuDsk and H0 will not be
>> on the nightly build Becker disk. You will> need to get those from your VCC
>> .vhd or I can send them to you. The merged> file will need to be
>> transferred to the DW4 boot disk.>> I just checked and Bill Pierce at>
>> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/the-color-compute>
>> r-drivewire4-hdbdos-nitros9-starter-kit> in one of the VCC .vhd drives
>> should have both the EmuDsk and DW driver> sets installed.>>> Robert>>> -->
>> Coco mailing list> Coco at maltedmedia.com> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mai
>> lman/listinfo/coco>-- WayneThe Structure of I-Codehttp://
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>
>
> --
> Wayne
>
> The Structure of I-Code
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/The_Structure_of_I-Code
>
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>



-- 
Wayne

The Structure of I-Code
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decode
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