[Coco] B&B XTROM

[Chester Patterson]

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.

/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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