[Coco] DriveWire 4.3.3o hanging NitrOS-9 on VCC 2.01...Nope

[Bill Pierce]

William, I'm glad you found it was neither DW or VCC. I would've probably argued in favor of both :-)If you don't "need" the new features of the "latest" Java... just switch back and turn off autoupdates.I don't allow ANYTHING to autoupdate on my PC, mainly due to limited bandwidth, but I do find it gives me more control over what gets updated and when it gets updated.Also, Aaron had another version of DW4 that a few of us were "beta testing" a few years ago and personally, I wouldn't go back to DW4 4.3.3o (I've seen the others who were using it post the same thing). This version (4.3.4e) has a few neat features that I couldn't live without. And no, it was never available through DW4's "update" option. One of the features is that you don't need to give it more memory. I run 4 instances in one GUI (another feature), each with 4 or more VHDs mounted (90-128 meg each) and never have memory problems.If Aaron catches this post and gives me permission, I'll post it on my site and make it available since the original download site seems to be gone, unless he wants to add it back to his site. Since Aaron has stated he no longer intends to support/develope DW4, he should at least let this version go to those who want it. Yes, it has a few bugs in a couple of the new features, but seems to be more stable in the old features... especially on a Windows system as that's where I was having problems and when Aaron told me to try this one. I have been using it about 3 or 4 years now and it would take a complete new DW5 to make me change :-)I would even be willing to document the new features (and their bugs) and create a nice PDF to go along with the download.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
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPediahttp://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_PageGlobal Moderator for TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer Forumshttp://www.tandycoco.com/forum/E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com-----Original Message-----From: William Carlin <whcarlinjr at gmail.com>To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>Sent: Wed, Sep 14, 2016 1:19 amSubject: [Coco] DriveWire 4.3.3o hanging NitrOS-9 on VCC 2.01...NopeNitrOS-9 Enthusiasts and CoCo Lovers

I have been experiencing what appeared to be at first random locks of
NitrOS-9 shortly after bootup when accessing DriveWire 4.3.3o

After boot, even accessing the 'dw' command by itself would cause my Telnet
session to lock.  Then I tried right at the console and it would lock.
Pressing F5 would reboot NitrOS-9 and it would hang right after displaying
the NitrOS-9 URL.  Using F9 to "power down' VCC and then boot NitrOS-9
again would do the same thing.  At first I wanted to blame VCC (sorry Bill)
and even when as far a stripping down the NitrOS-9 drivers to the bare
minimum and removing SuperIDE support (that I have noticed to be a little
flaky after heavy reads and writes) and the same thing would happen again
and again.  Then I realized that this is the same behavior that would
happen if I started VCC without first starting DriveWire.  Sure enough that
was the cause.  However, there is nothing wrong with DriveWire 4.3.3o.  It
has not been updated since 6/21/2013 and my configuration is simple and
does not change except for what disks I have mounted.  What HAS changed is
the version of Java VM.  A recent update to 1.8.0_101-b13 seems to have an
unexpected "feature".  I use a custom heap size to give DriveWire more
memory to work with in case I decide to create a new disk on the fly and
keep it in memory until I do a write to file or just kill it.  I looked at
my config in the Java Control Panel applet and sure enough my custom heap
size parameters are gone.  I added back my changes '-Xms128m -Xmx512m" and
no more lockups! This never happened when Sun was running the show.  Just
though I would share my findings in case someone else was ripping their
hair out over this.  Us older CoCo guys need to keep what little hair we
have left.

CoCo4Life

William Carlin

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