[Coco] format problems

[Tormod Volden]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gene Heskett wrote:
> I have managed to get the twin seagate 1G drives to spin up again, so my
> coco is running. My latest build of nitros9 has a format command that
> $10C7 byte long, same as my latest nitros9 build for a 6309.
...
> At the end of all this, it looks as if I have exactly the same code as my
> March 2016 build, possibly with some descriptor fixes by Chris Hawk.

Hi Gene,

The level1/cmds/format.asm in the repo hasn't had any code changes since 2005:
Module size: $10C7  #4295
Module CRC : $0ABD19 (Good)

> Format it unchanged. Still needs 11170 bytes of sysram, but but I only
> have 10k available. That equals an out of ram crash by about the 3rd
> track written to a floppy. Since it writes a track at a time while
> formatting, that seems like its asking for more memory than it needs.

Yes, can anyone explain why it needs so much memory?

> But adjusting its memory either direction only makes it crash before
> even stepping to the next track. So I still can't format anything.
>
> Whats the maximum size I can merge to make a shell, this one is $1DC7
> long.

Your $1DC7 is 7623 decimal. The cmds/makefile in the repo warns that
the shell module must be less than 7681 bytes. Not sure why.

Regards,
Tormod