[Coco] DW4 problems

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 6:54 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
>>
>> In Bob's case I suspect it's happening due to a clock operation that
>> was added to the OS9 driver but the DW software (and I thought
>> removed/fixed, but apparently not in the disk Bob has at least).  This
>> caused the CoCo to send a clock timestamp every 60 seconds.  Because
>> the server doesn't know about that operation, it ignores the opcode.
>> However, the timestamp contains arbitrary values depending on the
>> current time, and eventually it will contain a valid opcode in that
>> data such as OP_WRITE.  As soon as this happens, the server expects
>> sector data, but of course it doesn't get any, and we get the "server
>> loaded" message.
>>
>> tl;dr - If you see this message, it's probably due to garbage from the
>> coco that happens to match the start of a valid operation
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>
> I will check the crc of my 'dw' module when dcheck gets done.  As
> drivewire.dsk downloads/installs go,and which I built that boot from, its
> likely a year old.
>

Turns out the clock thing was a red herring.  Bob's issue really was a
USB thing, the worst and strangest I've ever seen.
It happened to generate garbage at approx 60 second intervals which is
what mislead my guessing.  AFAIK the new clock operation (coco telling
server what time it is, rather than the usual opposite) was only
active in the nightly builds for a short time and has been corrected
since this year's cocofest, so it hopefully isn't "in the wild".