[Coco] Cobbler and hard disks was:Re: shell in NitrOS-9

[Bruce W. Calkins]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "mike delyea"


> Just curious, since we are discussing hard drives, didn't Tandy make a 
> hard
> drive controller for the coco?  Has anyone ever tried it?  Could it boot
> OS-9 without a floppy?

=====================================================

I possess the RS hard drive "controller" from a batch of CoCo stuff I 
acquired for free, but have never sprung for a compatible drive set.  It is 
basically a SASI (Pre-SCSI) interface and needed a specific WD-100x drive 
controller to work with a basic MFM drive.  The OS-9 drivers are in the 
Level 1, Release 2 modules set and I think in the Level 2 modules too.  I'm 
not sure if they were on the Level 1, Release 1 disks, but those modules 
were even more of a kludge then Release 2.



If I had ever gotten the parts together to play with it I might have an 
answer, but ATM that is not in the cards.  The drive sets seldom sell on 
eBay for less than $250.00 and my budget is a little thin for that.  ATM I 
am watching two units that are buy-it-now for $359.99 and $395.00.



Now to the root question; Booting from the hard drive is a matter of hard 
code in the ROM.  In several alternative DOSs for the CoCo, there is code 
that looks for a File named AUTOEXEC or equivalent, and it automatically 
loads and runs that file.  From there you can go anywhere your system is 
capable.  In my RGB-DOS system, which looks first on the RGB-hard drive's 
DOS first and the Floppy second, I am presented with a menu to select two 
flavors of OS-9 and a couple configurations of RS/RGB-DOS.  My CoCo has been 
packed away for too long for me to remember all the variations, but I 
remember having a lot of fun getting it set up, since several programs were 
specific to a flavor of the OSs involved.



Bruce W.