[Coco] Emulator

[Frank Swygert]

Are you positive you're not running a 64 bit OS? Could be that, but then again some of the laptop chip sets are a lot more picky than desktop versions. Most of the newer ones are closer to the same, but some are still just a wee bit different and drivers occasionally have trouble with them. I still recall a number of 486 laptops that had proprietary chip sets in them, some programs just wouldn't work at all! I couldn't get the Keil DOS emulator to run on an old HP Omnibook (6000?) at all because of the chip set used in it -- something odd about the display. 

You must be thinking about an older version of Nitros! Most OS-9 users have switched to Nitros, though there are still a few who haven't for one reason or another. It's pretty robust now, though some of the commands and drivers are slightly different than OS-9. 

I hope someone does get you a copy of those disks if you're going to run them to track down issues with MESS. I don't use it, but from the recent complaints you'd be doing the CoCo community a service! 

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Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 15:11:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Wayne Campbell <asa.rand at yahoo.com>

This is very interesting. I assumed Vcc didn't run when I tried it because it was treated by XP the same way all other 16-bit programs I've tried to run were treated. The window closes faster than it opens. Are there any special settings or anything I should know about when installing it? I don't recall seeing anything in the documentation that suggested special settings...

As to NitrOS-9, perhaps it is better than it used to be. Maybe it's just my memory being faulty, but I could swear that many of the basic commands included with OS-9 Level II as having parameter options that are absent in the version of NitrOS-9 I have. Then there's the fact that the .os9 image for the 80-track version of the /dd descriptor doesn't include the /d1 or /d2 descriptors for 80-track drives. I have found nothing on the images supplied that will allow me to use the default descriptors for those drives to build a custom bootfile either.

I would much rather have the original OS-9 level II disk and the development system disk. At least then I would be able to isolate problems as being related to MESS, and not the OS or Basic09.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
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