[Coco] NitrOS-9 V03.02.00 Released

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 09 December 2003 18:09, David wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 04:42:54PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Tuesday 09 December 2003 14:46, Boisy Pitre wrote:
>> >> So where can I get a copy of that directory tree?  I think I
>> >> can read a 3.5" DD diskette here.
>> >
>> >I'm going to email you the zip file.
>> >
>> >Boisy
>>
>> That won't do me any good Boisy, I have no workable method to get
>> it to the coco other than you sending it up on a 5.25 DSDD or a
>> 3.5 DD, formatted in regular os9 format.  Sorry.
>
>Gene, do you have fdutils for Linux?  That, coupled with Boisy's
>os9tools will allow you to copy files to a disk you have mounted.
>
>It seems that you don't even have to dd a .dsk image.  You can
> simply "os9 copy" a file straight onto that disk.

That doesn't float either.  Error 214 in trying to write to a disk 
that was just os9format'ed.

--------------------
[root at coyote nos96309]# /root/bin/os9copy -help
Syntax: os9copy {[<opts>]} <srcfile> {[<...>]} <target> {[<opts>]}
Usage:  copy files
Options:
     -b=size    size of copy buffer in bytes or K-bytes
[root at coyote nos96309]# /root/bin/os9copy 
./nos96309l2v030200_ds40_1.dsk /dev/fd0
/root/bin/os9copy: error 214 creating 
'/dev/fd0/nos96309l2v030200_ds40_1.dsk'
-----------------
So I rewrote them with dd again:
----------------
[root at coyote nos96309]# dd if=nos96309l2v030200_ds40_1.dsk of=/dev/fd0
663+0 records in
663+0 records out
[root at coyote nos96309]# /root/bin/os9format /dev/fd0
[root at coyote nos96309]# dd if=nos96309l2v030200_ds40_2.dsk of=/dev/fd0
313+1 records in
313+1 records out
-------------
and then ran os9dcheck against the second disk. It munched along for 
10 seconds or so and segfaulted:
-------------------------
[root at coyote nos96309]# /root/bin/os9dcheck /dev/fd0
Volume - 'NitrOS-9/6309 Level 2 Disk 2' in file: (null)
$00B4 bytes in allocation map
1 sector per cluster
$0005A0 total sectors on media
Sector $000002 is start of root directory file descriptor
Segmentation fault
---------------------------------
>However, with the os9tools, you can create, format, dsave|copy to a
> .dsk image and then dd that image onto the floppy just to be safe. 
> As a matter of fact, you can even os9gen an os9 boot disk on your
> linux machine.

That may be another path I might wander down.  The disks I just made 
with fdtools and dd are bad, in an odd sort of way.  I can't do a dir 
on them, error 214.  Then I tried ded /d1@ and found that the root 
dir's file descriptor was supposed to start in sector 2 according to 
DD.DIR!  Sector 1 being the bit allocation map, and sector 2 was 
blank, all zero's, as was every sector up to 6, at which time I ran 
into the bootfile itself I think.  Humm, no, it started with the 
usual executable of $87CD, so that wasn't the bootfile.

DD.BOOT said the boot was at $0C, and was a bit less than 32k long.
However, neither disk will allow me to seek past sector 8 on the disk 
without eventually returning an error 247, seek error. So the disk 
format is pretty well fubared IMO.  I was going to build an FD for 
the root dir using ded, but with the first data showing up at $06, 
and the DD.SAS being 8, there isn't enough room to do it right 
anyway.

I think I'll verify that the .dsk inmage is ok with khexedit next.

Nope, I don't see anything wrong with the .dsk images, so its my 
chipset that won't do this I guess.  We went down this multiflora 
rose guarded path once before, got bloodied and came to this same 
conclusion.

-------------and hour later after trying it again----------

And the second pass, this time using os9format as you suggested to 
init the disks, apparently also failed for the exact same reasons.  
And it looks like os9copy is file oriented, not raw disk oriented 
like dd is.

One thing I haven't tried is to set dd's block size to 256 bytes, let 
me try that once.  Nope, same result for dcheck, a segfault.  Exact 
same output so I won't bother to paste it in here.

It looks like I need someone with a valid, real hardware fdc in their 
chipset to make me some disks.  This one is terminally fubared.  I 
already sent Boisy a request as I think he probably still has my card 
number from the last time.  Damn this is discouraging...

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP at 1400mhz  512M
99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.