[Coco] 1) NitrOS9 memory requirements? and 2) Using DLOAD with Linux serial ports

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Eric Keppel <keppel at earthsounds.com> wrote:
> On 4/11/2011 3:07 PM, Darren A wrote:
>>
>> It does not matter that you are running HDBDOS from RAM instead of a
>> ROM pak.  You are only using HDBDOS to start the NitrOS9 boot process.
>> Once NitrOS9 boots it takes over all of the RAM, removing HDBDOS from
>> the scene.
>>
>> Darren
>>
>> --
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>>
>
> Ok.  I wasn't worried about HDBDOS, since I figured it was being
> overwritten.  I just didn't know if NitrOS9 was supposed to run from ROM or
> if it was ok to take up valuable RAM.  I noticed that ROM paks are available
> with NitrOS9 on them from Cloud9, and was trying to decide if using one of
> those would give me more free memory to run NitrOS9 programs or not over the
> way I am doing it presently.

The 6809 has 64k of address space. It doesn't make a lot of difference
whether any given OS9 module is in ROM or RAM, it's going to take up
the same amount of that address space.  So, moving things into ROM
isn't really going to change the amount of free memory you have.

There other tricks that can increase memory.  One is to simple reduce
the number of modules you're loading.  Since you don't have a floppy
drive, you can lose that module.  There may be others.  Building
custom nitros9 disks is not difficult if you are somewhat familiar
with 'make' on linux.  Check out the NitrOS9 source using CVS and have
a look around.  I have been thinking about some sort of question based
boot disk maker, but haven't started on it yet.  An extreme approach
to going light on modules is to use the Drivewire "headless" disks,
these don't even load the modules for the CoCo's keyboard and screen
(VDG etc).  You can only access the OS9 system via telnet from another
computer, but it has lots of free ram.

Good luck
-Aaron