[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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>
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-- 
Cheers, Gene
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