[Coco] HDB-DOS 1.4 LBA Does Not Produce OK Prompt on Glenside IDE Controller

Tormod Volden lists.tormod at gmail.com
Thu Aug 14 17:17:22 EDT 2014


On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Robert Gault wrote:
> Kip Koon wrote:
>>
>> Hi HDB-DOS Experts!
>>
>> I burnt HDB-DOS 1.4 LBA and ran it on the Glenside IDE Controller last
>> night
>> on my Coco 3 and was greeted by the HDB-DOS 1.4 LBA message as well as the
>> DECB message, but the OK prompt never appeared?  I figured HDBLBA.ROM was
>> the correct rom image to use since HDB-DOS 1.1D LBA is running on my
>> SuperIDE controller.  I'm running an IDE to CF Card adapter plugged into
>> the
>> IDE connector and it is strapped as the Master Drive and for +5V which is
>> externally supplied.  This configuration works fine under NitrOS-9 6809 L2
>> v3.3.0 DW Coco 3.  Is HDBLBA.ROM the correct rom image file to use and if
>> so, what do you think is the problem.  If not, which rom image should I
>> use?
>> Any other ideas?  Thank you all in advance for any help you can give.
>>
>>
>>
>> Kip Koon
>>
>
> Far as I can tell without having any of the hardware, the compact flash card
> on this controller is in true IDE mode. That means HDBDOS IDE would be the
> right choice for the ROM.
> http://www.frontiernet.net/~mmarlette/Cloud-9/Support/CFIDE%20FAQ.html

HDBDOS for IDE comes in two flavors, CHS OR LBA mode. The difference
is whether the sectors are addressed by Cylinder, Head, Sector or by
Logical Block Addressing. This is a selection you often can do in a
PC's BIOS as well. With LBA the software (OS/driver) doesn't need to
care about cylinders and heads and the disk itself takes care of that.
And it allows BIOSes to address more sectors (larger disks) than with
CHS. A compact flash card has no disk geometry but can often do CHS
translation to support old disk controllers/BIOSes. You just have to
make sure you always use the card in the same mode if you are using it
on different devices/computers, and LBA is probably a safe bet in most
cases. If you were to use it on different devices in CHS mode you
would have to make sure the CHS geometry parameters are the same
everywhere.

Compact card flash cards have different modes of operation. The True
IDE mode makes them appear like normal hard drives. This is what you
will use with HDBDOS. In fact, your CF-IDE adapter probably forces the
card into True IDE mode. The other modes are PC Card Memory Mode and
PC card I/O mode, which use a PCMCIA protocol and sometimes allow
hot-plugging (True IDE does not).

Tormod

References:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Practical_Electronics/Memory_Devices/CompactFlash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing

>
> You might get a better idea of what happened by following the HDBDOS code
> after the messages are printed to see what hung.
>


More information about the Coco mailing list