[Coco] B&B XTROM

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 14 January 2009, Chester Patterson wrote:

>B&B rigs (of which I configured and sold several during my stint at Howard

>Medical) do not require a PROM installed in the controller (we used the

>DTC-5150 controller, several others were possible) The drive parameters

>(cylinders, tracks, etc) are set by the jumpers on the controller. The only

>PROM sold for the B&B rig was optional, it was the AutoBoot PROM. If

>purchased, it was installed instead of the BIOS PROM supplied standard with

>the controller. It first does a RAM test thereby allowing the hard disk to

>come up to speed. Then it checks track 128 for the OS9 bootstrap module

>(modified to access the hard disk) and boots OS9 from the hard disk. If you

>hold down the ALT key during the RAM test then the PROM looks instead for

>the bootstrap module on track 129. This allows you to have two separate

>OS9Boot on a single drive. I used this feature to boot into either OS9

>command line prompt or OS9 Multivue.

>To use the HD from RS-DOS, B&B suggested the HYPER I/O DOS package. I never

>used this package.

>I believe the nearly complete docs are available on-line somewhere. Or I can

>send a zip file to whomsoever needs it. I have a very complete set of docs.

>

Humm, between these two messages I might be able to cobble up a 2nd coco3 hard 
drive system again.  I have one of the later B&B's in the gold pack, (& a 
couple of old, squeaky 10 meg tandon drives,) which unlike the original black 
one, was never a problem child when I booted from a floppy.  If its not too 
much trouble, send it along to me also Chester, at gene.heskett at gmail.com

Thanks.


>/Chester

>Costa Rica

>

>-----Original Message-----

>From: L. Curtis Boyle [mailto:curtisboyle at sasktel.net]

>Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 7:51 AM

>To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts

>Subject: Re: [Coco] B&B XTROM

>

>

>The XT ROM does not have anything hard coded into it concerning the

>drive; it uses sector 0 like other OS-9 drives. The only exception is

>if you want two different boots - if you are going to use the 2nd boot

>then it used either track 128 or 129 (can't remember) for the

>alternate boot track.

>

>Sent from my iPhone

>L. Curtis Boyle

>

>On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:05 AM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:

>> On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Brian Goers wrote:

>>>> I was under the impression that there's a group (Glenside?) who

>>>> has distribution rights to Burke & Burke software. I wonder if

>>>> that includes the various versions of the B&B XT-ROM EPROM?

>>>

>>> I may be wrong but I thought the ROM had the hard drive parameters.

>>> But it's been a long time since I had a B&B system. I will ask Tony

>>> Podraza if he has the information. We (Glenside) do have the

>>> distribution rights to the G&B software. I'll let everyone know as

>>> soon as I can.

>>

>> To my knowledge, the ROM contains nothing specific to the drive.  It

>> "dumbly" attempts to read the track that contains the OS-9

>> bootloader, looking for it at the same offset as it would occupy on

>> a floppy (Track 19?).  Any unit-specific information is patched into

>> the OS.

>>

>>

>>

>> --

>>

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>

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-- 
Cheers, Gene
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