[Coco] NitrOS-9 newbie needs some help

[Nickolas Marentes]

>I've got a 512K SIMM upgrade, too.  Never had a problem.

I remember years ago (1990?), I made up my own 512K memory upgrade
consisting of 8 x 44256 RAMS piggybacked as pairs and plugged into the
existing 4464 RAM sockets on the motherboard. I remember Marty Goodman
saying that this does not work due to different RAM refresh cycles but I had
no trouble with this setup, even having developed Cosmic Ambush with it.

When I went back to OS-9 on my second attempt, I found I couldn't boot the
standard OS-9!! I tracked the problem down to the RAM chips. That's when I
wired up a new memory upgrade using 2 x 8 chip 256K Simm modules. OS-9 then
booted. This is why I am pointing my finger at the RAM again. I remember the
trauma I had from this past experience.

>OS-9 pushes the hardware pretty hard (NitrOS-9 pushes harder), in
>different ways from the (beautiful, fast, rockin') games you've turned
>out..  And the hardware is, after all, nearly 20 years old.

The same can be said for all of Sockmasters stuff and even my Gate Crasher
game. I think that what OS-9 does is push the disk I/O (because my games
didn't use disk I/O). There must be some tight timing issues between RAM and
Disk I/O access I suspect.

>Your formatting problems might be a sign of this. For instance, the
>old, slow OS-9 gave floppy drives 30ms to do a seek.  NitrOS-9?  6ms.
>If you're unlucky you may have a floppy drive that's just too tired to
>deal.

I've been running a 6ms access RS-DOS rom since the CoCo 1 days without any
formatting problems including low interleave settings.

>As someone already said, yep, especially if you're on 50Hz power.

This is the only other area I need to play with. I'll need to dig up my old
OS-9 text but does anybody know how to switch NitrOS-9 to 50 hz?

>On a hard drive, MultiVue isn't too bad.  It's not the greatest GUI
>ever seen, but it's not bad.

I'd love a hard drive but just don't have the cash for one at the moment.
I'm interested in the Cloud 9 SCSI controller though. Does anyone have one
of these to sell second hand? I was looking at mounting a laptop style 2.5"
drive within the multi-pack interface (there is room) using its 5 volt power
then running the interface cable from the SCSI controller back into the
multipak.

>And if you want to do real development on it, you need the rest of the
>toolbox.  (C, the dev system, etc).

When I bought the original OS-9 from Tandy, I soon after bought the
Development pack. Actually, the Australian Tandy head office in Sydney rang
me directly asking me if I was interested in it!! I said yes with the dream
that I would use the ASM to write cool stuff for it. As I mentioned in my
earlier post, I didn't even get past mastering OS-9 before losing my sanity.
:)

>Rather than wait for Boisy and friends to get their updated docs
>online, I recommend tracking down copies of the regular OS-9 docs,
>either on-line or on paper.  So far, Boisy's changes have mostly been

I have the originals but thought I'd stick with the NitrOS-9 docs just in
case it's different (or better).

>either cosmetic (command-line option changes) or hidden internally
>(bug fixes, speedups).  OS-9 is a pretty complicated thing, with
>a different design concept than you may be used to.

I used an Amiga and loved it's OS. Super smooth, practically bullet proof
and an efficient GUI.

And, if you can afford it, go with a hard drive.  OS-9 (of any
version) is SO much happier with a hard drive.

I'm sure!!

Nick