[Coco] Re: working with physical floppy drives under NitrOS-9 via DriveWire

[chadbh74]

   +1 on this, HDB-DOS in the controller is great.  I don't have a MPI for
   my CoCo so my setup is a little simpler.

   Sent from my Galaxy Tab 4

   --------- Original Message ---------
   From: Bill Pierce via Coco
   To: coco at maltedmedia.com
   Date: Sun Oct 18 10:31:16 CDT 2015
   Subject: Re: [Coco] working with physical floppy drives under NitrOS-9
   via DriveWire
   Chris... HDBDOS has NOTHING to do with OS9.
   Once OS9 boots ALL RSDOS is lost (including hdbdos)... always has been.
   OS9 relies on it's own drivers and uses ALL of the 64k (including all
   rom memory)
   Now with that being said, if you are using the Drivewire disks from the
   repository, you should have access to your normal drives in os9 as
   those disks come with /d0, /d1, & /d2 installed on the disk.
   I think your problem is that you are running hdbdos from another cart &
   therefore changing the slot number from your disk controller...
   Personally, I would replace the rom in the disk controller with the
   hdbdos rom. hdbdos (all forms) is about 98% compatible with RSDOS and
   will access your drives fine from RSDOS. Read the hdbdos manual:
   http://www.frontiernet.net/~mmarlette/Cloud-9/Support/index.html
   But OS9... it has nothing to do with hdbdos (except to boot), and once
   it's running, you should have drive access.
   try:
   dir /d0
   (with an OS9 disk in the drive)
   Bill Pierce
   "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to
   slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
   My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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   -----Original Message-----
   From: Chris Oliver <chris.w.oliver at me.com>
   To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
   Sent: Sun, Oct 18, 2015 10:28 am
   Subject: Re: [Coco] working with physical floppy drives under NitrOS-9
   via DriveWire
   Apologies -- I meant "once NitrOS-9 loads up, I believe it overwrites
   HDB-DOS...".
   :)
   -------
   All -- To clarify my use case:
   I want to be able to boot to NitrOS-9
   and run it from DriveWire -- while using my two physical floppy drives.
   (Basically running the OS from a virtual drive, while physically
   accessing the
   floppy drives tied to my 3029 controller.)
   Problem I'm having is chicken/egg I
   think. Currently I need to load HDB-DOS in order to DOS the NitrOS-9
   image on
   DriveWire. Once DriveWire loads up, I believe it overwrites HDB-DOS
   (doesn't
   it?). And then I need a path to the physical floppies -- meaning I then
   have to
   switch over to slot 4 on the MPI (where the controller lives). After
   that
   switch to slot 4, doing things like directory listings and format
   commands (from
   NitrOS-9 via DriveWire to my physical /d0 drive) does cause the drive
   to spin
   up, and the read/seek head does attempt to do something (makes some
   very
   different sounds than normal, though) -- but all such commands end in
   error
   codes. A format of /d0, for example, gets to the stage of naming the
   disk
   before it dumps out with an error. Dir commands result in errors
   without even
   partial listings.
   So the real question is: Does NitrOS-9 -- running via DriveWire
   (not via a physical boot disk) - have the ability to access the
   physical floppy
   drives via the 3029 controller. And if so, how can you boot to the OS
   on
   DriveWire (which seems to require HDB-DOS), while at the same time
   providing
   access to the controller (which is tied to slot 4 in the MPI). And in a
   scheme
   like this -- which elements remain resident (vs. being overwritten by
   others)?
   Hope this helps explain it better -- I'm probably missing something
   obvious
   here. :)
   Thanks to all!
   Chris
   -----
   All,
   I leverage HDB-DOS (burned onto an
   eprom in slot 1 of the MPI) to DOS to the latest Coco1 NitrOS-9 disk
   image (that
   has been loaded into the Disk 0 slot in DriveWire). Loads up great. Can
   work
   with virtual drives (/X1, etc.) perfectly fine.
   So -- now I want to be able to
   access the physical floppies. I have the orig 3029 Tandy controller,
   with a
   pair of the orig Tandy floppy drives. Is there any way to run NitrOS-9
   via
   DriveWire, and yet be able format and use physical floppies? Would be
   great if
   I wasn't restricted to virtual drives...
   Very curious -- let me know!
   Chris
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