[Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

[Walter]

Bill

That makes sense.

How is the boot organised on the nos96809l2v030300coco3_dw.dsk?

It appears to be a single disk image with no floppys appended to the end of it.

I think I get it!

The VCCemudisk has floppys appended after 5A000 and the RGBDOS is aware of that offset!  And that was done to specifically boot from a floppy.

If the ROM (RGBDOS, HDBDOS or whatever) is not aware of that offset then they will read from sector 0.

Which is why I can boot Nitros9 from nos96809l2v030300coco3_dw.dsk with my HDB-DOS rom and without any floppy!

Why wasn't this same approach also used for the VCCemudisk? Because then you wouldn't have any DECB floppies???

I'm figuring that I could convert a VCCemudisk to boot without a floppy if I can free track 34 to perform  a successful os9gen.

Walter



-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Bill Pierce via Coco
Sent: Tuesday, 15 January 2019 10:37 PM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Cc: Bill Pierce
Subject: Re: [Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

Walter... the rest (after the offset) are RSODOS images... OS9 does not read those images. At least not without special softrware...

To create the bootdisk on the rsdos section, you must work with virtual floppies (in OS9) to create a boot... then backup that boot to the intended drive in hdbdos. and yes, an RSDOS backup can be done on OS9 disks, just don't write anything to them.

For hdbdos, read the manual from cloud9
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Walter <zambotti at iinet.net.au>
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts' <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Tue, Jan 15, 2019 9:29 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

Ok so correcting my assumption that the floppies in the vhd proceed the hard disk image, but in fact follow...

I calculated the offset to be 529920 (size of vhd) - (256*630 or 161280) = 368640 (5A000) and set the size limit to 630.

And that works!

However that only works well for HDBDOS. And not Nitros9.

Can it be made to work for Nitros9 as well?

Walter

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Walter
Sent: Tuesday, 15 January 2019 9:56 PM
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'
Subject: Re: [Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

I have been reading the DriveWire 4 documentation and it describes the HDBDOS mode.

I can see that the sector offset and size limit are set in the Drive Params...

I have:

- enabled HDBDOS mode
- mounted VCCemudisk.vhd in drive 0 (no limits)
- mounted VCCemudisk.vhd in drive 1 offset 0 size limit 630

But this did not appear to limit the access to the first floppy.

A  "dir /x1"  still shows the main hard drive of VCCemudisk.vhd is mounted.

In fact it doesn't seem to matter what offset and size I enter I can only ever access the main OS9 hard drive.

I am assuming that VCCemudisk has 256 630 sector floppies preceding the main OS9 hard drive.

Walter



-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Walter
Sent: Tuesday, 15 January 2019 9:06 PM
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'
Subject: Re: [Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

Thanks.

That makes sense for a boot from a floppy connected directly from the system.

How does HDB-DOS and DW4 change that?

When the vhd contains a number of preliminary floppies and then a hard drive HDB-DOS must load the kernel file from track 34 of the nominated floppy.  But the bootfile must reside where? The floppy or the hard drive.

Is it possible to mount the virtual floppies that precede the harddrive in a VHD so that they can be accessed from Nitros9 via DW?

If not the build process for creating a bootable VHD image must be via an external tool!

Walter

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Tormod Volden
Sent: Tuesday, 15 January 2019 8:20 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Nitros9 Boot Process

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 12:57 PM Walter wrote:
>
> Where can I find a detailed description of the boot process and what sectors
> it expects to use, etc.

This might be helpful:
http://www.nitros9.org  -> "NitrOS-9 wiki for documentation" -> "The
NitrOS-9 Boot Process Explained"

Regards,
Tormod

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