[Coco] Glenside IDE Controller Question...

[Randy Just]

Your notes are helpful, but....

Unfortunately, I have spent a number of hours with this thing and am 
not much further than when I started.

In particular I am trying to create the pair of NitrOS 9 floppy 
diskettes.  I am assuming #1 is bootable
if it is made correctly and I can just type DOS when the Coco boots up.

At this time, I just get read errors.  This is after trying 3 
different 360K drives under DR-DOS.  I don't
know if DR-DOS has any bearing.

The *.DSK images indicate 40 tracks --- however, when using dskini, 
0-79 tracks are written.  Confused
on that point.

As much as I would like to use the Coco with the hard drive, it 
appears this may be a futile endeavor.

At 01:47 AM 10/20/2007, you wrote:

> >Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:07:24 -0700

> >From: Randy Just <randyjust at comcast.net>

>

> >After swapping out a few drives and changing my controller to a

> >FD-501, the thing came to life.  While the IDE card was plugged in

> >and power on, I changed the jumper to 70 from 50 and then the thing

> >starting working.

>

>You really shouldn't change jumpers while things are on.  Talk like

>that make me cringe.  Please don't terrify me, I've had a rough

>day. ;-)

>

> >I am a bit puzzled as I thought the floppy was at 70 and per the

> >Glenside doc, the jumper should be in the 50 setting with a multipak

> >controller.

>

>Yeah, the Glenside docs kinda suck.  The dood threw them together, and

>he clearly knew more about the IDE end then the CoCo end.

>

> >Is there a step-by-step procedure I can find somewhere to get a boot

> >diskette set-up where I can lformat the drive?

> >

> >Also, I see the update files for the IDE controller, but what is the

> >process to get them copied to 5.25" floppy diskettes?

>

>OK, frankly, you've got some homework to do.  First, goto

>http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/nitros9 and download it.  The

>Readme is a good introduction to transfering files and virtual disks

>between CoCo and PC.  (besides, NitrOS is much improved over old

>OS-9).

>

>Once you have a standard floppy-only NitrOS boot, the only other

>software you'll need is the Glenside drivers and utilities, BASIC-09,

>and a good text editor.

>

>Run detect_ide.  Think about what it tells you.  How many partitions

>are you going to create?  As I said before, 1-sector clusters are

>good.  NitrOS can handle bigger clusters, but some of the old OS-9

>software can cause problems because they all assume 1-sector

>clusters.  Is the drive LBA compatible?  There's a bug in makedesc

>concerning CHS partitions.  It's documented with the software on my

>site and rtsi and maltedmedia but I didn't *fix* it in those files.

>

>There are two versions of the driver, one supports 5 partitions and

>the other supports 11.  Choose which driver you will use.  I've had

>much better luck with the drivers which have the zero-sector bug

>fixed.

>

>Then run makedesc.  Something else not mentioned in the Glenside docs

>is that device descriptor names are 3 chars. max.  Regular OS-9 naming

>convention for hard drives is H0, H1, etc.

>

>When you're done with makedesc you should have the device descriptors

>saved on your disk as h0.dd or whatever.  Copy the descriptors into

>NITROS9/6809LII/MODULES/RBF.  Copy the proper driver into the same

>directory.  Note the file names.

>

>In NITROS9/6809LII/BOOTLISTS, make a copy of standard.bl.  Call it

>original.bl or whatever.  Edit standard.bl.  In the RBF section, add

>the glenside driver and the descriptors.

>

>In ...6809LII/BOOTSCRIPTS, run the "mb" script to make a new bootdisk.

>When that's done, use dsave to copy the files on disk 1 to your new

>boot(use help to check the syntax of dsave, it has changed from the

>original).  Add the glenside utilities.

>

>Reboot with your new boot disk.  If the gods are pleased it'll boot

>and you can lformat /h0.

>

>No, this isn't the quickest or easiest way to make a new boot disk,

>perhaps, but it's the way with the most control and the most

>educational.  Once you understand all of this, then you can play with

>ezgen or whatever.

>

>The last, and perhaps fussiest, step.  When you've copied stuff onto

>/h0 and you're confident everything's working, you can make a new DD

>descriptor.  Either use makedesc and be very careful to give it the

>same parameters as H0, or edit a copy of your H0.dd with ded, changing

>the name to DD (make sure the 0'th bit of the second "D" is set).

>Make a new bootdisk, replacing dd_ds40 with your new dd_ide.  If you

>can get this to work, it's the next best thing to having a IDE aware

>boot ROM. When you boot NitrOS, it will load os9boot and cmds/grfdrv

>off the floppy, then switch to the ide drive for everything else.

>

>Willard

>--

>Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org

>Socorro, New Mexico, USA

>"I've never been to Contempt!  Isn't that somewhere in New Mexico?"

>    --- Yacko

>

>

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