[Coco] Hard Drive Problems

Mon Jun 14 00:57:19 EDT 2004

Mark,

Okay, I stand corrected. My all-floppy boot disk was not built using the
make_rgbboot script. I'm sorry for the confusion. It was built using the
make_floppy_boot script. This was done a long time ago, long before my
hard drive ceased working a few days ago (or at least the NitrOS
partition ceased working). The floppy boot contains the /h0 descriptor
and SCSIsys.

I also must correct myself on another point. I DO have SCSIcmds. I found
some disks that came with my hard drive system I bought from you 3 years
ago and sure enough, SCSIcmds was on one of them, along with the
utilities 'createdd', 'hformat', 'megaread', and 'vfy16'. The disk these
utilities came on is labeled 'TC^3 SCSI Interface Rev. D 08/99'. My SCSI
drive ID is 0. The base address is $ff74-$ff75. I ran SCSIcmds. This is
the output I got from the program:

DETECTED DEVICE #0
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0A
Status Register =$1B
Status Byte returned from device=$00
Status Register =$1F
Status byte returned =$00
Status Byte returned from device=00
Device Status Returned =$00

DETECTED DEVICE #0
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$0B
Status Register =$00
Status Register =$00
Status Register =$00

At this point the program hangs. I can get out of the program by pressing
the [BREAK] key though.

> Can you boot off of the latest NitrOS-9 ver 03.02.01 disks? If you 
> can't
> then you have system issues that need to be resolved. The .dsk 
> images up on
> the NitrOS-9 site are working versions.

No, but it's not a Coco system problem per se. I posted recently that I
haven't been able to create a readable boot disk using the dskini utility
and the downloaded NitrOS boot disks. I'm trying to figure out what the
problem is. It might be a conflict with the BIOS setting on the PC I'm
using to make the disk, or the physical drive I'm using, or the command
syntax I'm using. 

Fred Provoncha

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:28:08 -0500 mmarlett at isd.net writes:
> Fred,
> 
> This response is again confusing to me:
> 
> More accurately, the COMPUTER hangs when it tries accessing the hard 
> drive
> (for example, when it tries booting NitrOS-9 from the hard drive, or 
> when,
> after booting from a floppy.....
> 
> If you are using the same disk to copy to the HDB-DOS hard drive 
> boot disk
> and the one to do a floppy boot then it will not work. The boot 
> loader for
> HDB-DOS is different, that the boot_loader for the floppy. Thus the
> different methods of booting. If this is not the case for the floppy 
> boot
> then you can't be using the  make_rgbboot script. ?????
> 
> My recommendation is not to try and build a HDB-DOS boot first. 
> Build a
> floppy boot. If you can't do that then of course your HDB-DOS boot 
> will not
> work. This is under the assumption that you are keeping commonality 
> in your
> bootlists. Once the floppy boots, then make your hard drive boot. 
> That
> works, then make the HDB-DOS boot disk and link. I do this in about 
> 5
> minutes on my CoCo, all three boot disks. 75% of the time is spent
> formatting the floppies....... The only difference between a hard 
> drive
> boot and an HDB-DOS boot is the boot loader module. From the script 
> you
> will see that the boot module is different from the hard drive 
> script and
> that the bootlist filename is the same.
> 
> You made changes to the script, it is broken or your modules are 
> broken. As
> Robert has suggested, idents..... These idents are on supportted 
> modules
> only. I can't verify what I don't have.
> 
> Can you boot off of the latest NitrOS-9 ver 03.02.01 disks? If you 
> can't
> then you have system issues that need to be resolved. The .dsk 
> images up on
> the NitrOS-9 site are working versions.
> 
> At the 14th Annual ChicagoFest we will be giving several seminars 
> and one
> of them is going to be NitrOS-9 and scripts. We already have it on 
> our CVS
> system, 2005 Fest seminar list. This will be a must see seminar if 
> you are
> a OS-9/NitrOS-9 user or wanna be.
> 
> The next release of NitrOS-9 is going to be great! More automation 
> than
> EVER before.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mark
> 
> >Mark,
> >
> >> SCSIcmds is a utility that came with SuperSCSI. It allows you to 
> 
> >> send
> >> commands/get responses from the SCSI bus.
> >
> >Since I don't have SuperSCSI, I guess I don't have SCSIcmds.
> >
> >> So the boot floppy that came with your system hangs the hard 
> drive 
> >> after
> >> you boot from the floppy? Or the disk you created hangs the hard
> >> drive/system after you boot from floppy?
> >
> >More accurately, the COMPUTER hangs when it tries accessing the 
> hard
> >drive (for example, when it tries booting NitrOS-9 from the hard 
> drive,
> >or when, after booting from a floppy, I type 'DIR /h0' or 'DCHECK 
> /h0').
> >The boot floppy I've mentioned didn't come with the system. I 
> created it
> >myself using the 'make_rgbboot' script that I found on the hard 
> drive. 
> >
> >> Are you mixing distributions? If so, not a good idea. 
> >
> >No, I'm not mixing distributions. Everything I have is NitrOS-9 
> ver. 2.0.
> >I was planning on installing ver. 3.xx when the hard drive (or at 
> least
> >the NitrOS partition of it) ceased to work.
> >
> >> Need to take the
> >> disks place them in the /dd/nitros9/ver03xxyy directory. Run the 
> 
> >> scripts
> >> with your proper bootlist modules. Then copy the files from the
> >> distrubution disk's CMDS directory to the /dd/cmds directory.
> >
> >It sounds like you're describing copying the files to my hard 
> drive,
> >which doesn't work.
> >
> >Any other ideas? Thanks for your help so far.
> >
> >Fred
> >
> >-- 
> >Coco mailing list
> >Coco at maltedmedia.com
> >http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >
> 
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> 
> 