[Coco] New Improved Nitros9 Booting

[Brett Gordon]

Thanks to some invaluable help from Boisy, Aaron, and Mark of Cloud-9,
and some good input from OS9 users on the IRC channel (WayneCa, Deek,
LostWizard), CoCoBoot has reached a milestone in its development.

One of the original goals of CoCoBoot was to provide a new way of
booting Nitros9.  Using CoCoBoot, you can now boot Nitros9 Level 2
without a standard boottrack.  CoCoBoot loads OS9BOOT and a special
KRN replacement, called CCBKRN, directly from the RBF filesystem of
your choosing.

Some benefits to using CoCoBoot and Nitros9 together:

* OS9Boot can be just a regular file, fragmented, or not.
* OS9Boot doesn't have to be called OS9Boot, it can be called
  anything that the RBF filesystem supports.
* OS9Boot doesn't have to be in the root directory
* OS9Boot doesn't have to "installed" into the LSN0 by cobbler.
* Have multiple OS9Boots... let CoCoBoot and you decide at boot-up
  which one to load.
* No more BOOT and REL modules taking up system memory space.  In fact,
  using CoCoBoot will save you 3 whole pages (768 bytes) of system
  memory.  BOOT and REL are simply not needed anymore.
* Much more fun is possible when you have a SuperIDE Flash ROM.  Just
  turn on your coco and watch Nitros9 bootup.

There are a few caveats:

* CoCoBoot only supports FDC, Glenside/SuperIDE, Drivewire. SCSI is
  not directly supported.  SCSI users are probably best served by
  making a small RBF system in DW or FDC that contains the OS9Boot
  and CCBKRN you need to access your SCSI. (and yes, it is entirely
  possible to put an RBF in low sectors on the disk, and have CoCoBoot
  "up top").  I'm far from a OS9 guru, so if anyone could help me with
  the os9 format commands to do this please email me!!!
* A New KRN replacement, called CCBKRN, will have to be located
  somewhere on a RBF filesystem.  Boisy has graciously rebuilt the
  latest Nitros9 sources to include this module/file.

To get:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cocoboot/files/noswiz_v1.zip/download


This link will point you to a zip file that contains a pre-compiled
CoCoBoot disk with a Nitros9 setup wizard.  I don't own a MPI, so I'm
not sure how badly that's all been coded up, but feel free to email
for help.  The wizard, like all wizards, only scratches the surface of
the flexibility of CoCoBoot.  More interesting things can be done if
you want to learn a little forth.  This wizard will, however,
graciously reprogram your SuperIDE flash to install itself, if you own
one!!!!

This Zip contains a bootable .dsk image and .wav files for cassette
installation.  After booting you'll be able to make a real bootable
floppy, flash your SuperIDE ROMs.   If anyone wants help making a
HDB-DOS bootable version, just give me an email.


Enjoy,

Brett M. Gordon
beretta42 at gmail.com