[Coco] Re: Nitros9 Questions - new Nitros9 user

[Charlie]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:36:28 -0500, Boisy G. Pitre  
<boisy at boisypitre.com> wrote:

>
> On Jul 14, 2004, at 7:37 AM, Charlie wrote:
>
>> I have Nitros9 installed on my COCO3 with a B&B hardrive controller. I  
>> have made my own custom boot disk and everything boots up fine and  
>> seems to be working.
>
> Congratulations!  It's a big step to get this far on your own.
>

Thanks! Just looking at the Standard.bl file helped in understanding where  
and how to add the drivers and descriptor for my Burke & Burke controller.  
I also added one called ddh0.dd and commented out the default one, so that  
the harddrive would be default. I didn't see anything similar in  
Standard.bl so I used ddh0.dd from my old setup.

Another question. I have a Disto SC-II for my 2 360k floppy drives. Should  
I leave everything alone or setup a sepcial driver? I did find a driver  
disk for the SC-II that came with the drive long ago. I'm thinking it  
works, leave it alone, unless someone tells me it's way better with the  
right drivers.



>> I have a couple of questions.
>>
>> 1st, The distribution Nitros9 disk boots with a 80 collum white text  
>> screen when you type dos. My custom boot disk stays in the 32 character  
>> screen. Not a big deal. I just thought the white boot screen was cool  
>> and was wondering why the custom boot disk doesn't have it. Of course  
>> when Nitros9 is running it goes to the regular Black on Green 80  
>> character screen. Whats the best way to make that default to white on  
>> black?
>
> I presume you used the 'mb' script to make your custom boot disk?  In  
> the script, look for rel_32 and replace it with rel_80.
>

OK. I'll do that. I guess if you don't have an RGB monitor, you wouldn't  
want the 80 collum text. I however thought the white screen was cool.


>> Can someone explain to me how to create windows. I read the PDF file,  
>> but I must admit, I'm lost. What used to work in my old OS-9 startup  
>> file to create a couple windows for me at boot up locks Nitros9 up  
>> solid. How would I create an 80,40, and 32 collum window? I'm not  
>> interested in windows on windows, just seperate full screen windows  
>> with a shell. I really need a 32 collum window to play Kings Quest 3 :-)
>
> Please post the commands that you type which locks up NitrOS-9.  That  
> should never happen, and if it is, then it is a bug and we need to track  
> it down.
>
I will post my (old) startup file when I get home tonight. When I removed  
all the commands to make my windows it no longer locked up the COCO. I'll  
post it how it was when it did lock up the COCO.

>> xmode /w4 type01
>> Shell i+/w4&
>> That would normaly make my 32 collum window in os9.
>
> You mean:
>
> xmode /w4 typ=01
> shell i=/w4&
>
> If you look in the standard.bl file, you'll see a section for VDGInt as  
> well as its descriptors (v1, v2, v3, etc.)  Be sure to uncomment these  
> out and they should work fine.
>
I'll give it a try!

>> Last question (for now). I use Ed to edit text files and I noticed  
>> under Nitros9 that my joystick isnt working as a mouse pointer anymore.  
>> If I can get a 32 collum text screen to start KQ3 I'll see if the  
>> joysticks are working at all.
>
> Are you sure you are using joydrv_joy.sb in your standard.bl file?  What  
> program or test are you using to determine that the joystick isn't  
> working?
>
> Again, if this is the case, then it's a bug, and we need to fix it.
>
The text editor "Ed" normaly on my OS9 system there is a mouse pointer I  
control with a joystick. When I switched over to Nitros9 I copied just the  
Ed file over to my CMDS directory, but maybe there are other files  
required. Like I said, if all goes well and I get the 32 collum screen  
I'll run Kings Quest 3 and that will be the "joystick test". :)

>> Thanks!
>> Charlie
>>
>
> So what are your impressions of NitrOS-9?  How painful was it to go to a  
> custom boot disk.  Did you find the scripts to be a big help?
>
> Also, are you using the 6809 or 6309 version?
>
> Boisy
>
The 6809 version.

The biggest trouble I had was hauling out an old win98 machine to make the  
1st boot floppy. The web page (I dont think) doesnt say you need to use  
the DSKINI on the Nitros9 site to make the disk, and I was trying in vain  
with 2 other versions of DSKINI I have. The disks were failing until I  
decided to try the DSKINI version right on the Nitros9 site.

After that everything wasnt too hard. I was glad to see the old B&B  
drivers work so I can use my hard disk, and that had a lot to do with if I  
would stick with Nitros9 or not.

Making a boot disk was a pain only because of (unless I'm mistaken) the  
lack of a descent text editor. I have to keep booting my old OS-9, use Ed  
to edit the Standard.bl file, reboot Nitros9 and create the boot disk.  
Also I must have been overwhelmed a bit because I didnt think to chx cmds  
on the modules disk and was getting frustrated, so I loaded all the  
commands I saw in the mb script file in to memory. Duh ....... the cmds  
were right there on the same disk....sigh.... all I had to do was type chx  
/d1/cmds and it would have worked the 1st time.

The scripts are excellent. I would have given up without them.

So far my only concern is mostly not with Nitros9 but with Shell+2.2a that  
Nitros9 uses. If you see another post I made on the list, the simple  
scripts I made while using Shell+2.1 in OS9 to start all my games and  
apps, all get errors and dont work.

chx /h0/games/sierra/cmds
chd /h0/games/sierra
sierra </1

This works when typed in, but if you put it in a file called kq3.start and  
try to run it, you will get an error 216(?)

It would be a major pain to have to list a text file to see what apps need  
Runb loaded and so forth and type in the chx and chd paths for everything  
I wanted to run.

Thanks for your reply. Its great to be playing with the COCO again after  
all this time.

Charlie

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