[Coco] is this a bug?

[Dave Philipsen]

On 4/20/2017 7:46 AM, Brett Gordon wrote:
> On Apr 20, 2017 3:40 AM, "Dave Philipsen" <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
>> Just in case anyone's curious, I'm attempting to make a slightly modified
> version of Brett's boot ROM for the CoCo3FPGA.  He did an excellent job
> with the booter except that it was assembled on a non-native assembler and
> ported over.  Perhaps I am being sort of a purist but I'm trying to make
> this work directly under OS9.  I figure I've got a fast enough machine and
> all of my work files are on a fast SD card. It takes all of two seconds to
> assemble the file.  So why not?
>
> Is there a way to officially mod my work to keep it kosher with both
> assembler environments?  This would mean less work in future.

Mmmmm....not sure about that.  The OS9 assembler chokes on the semicolon 
comment delimiters and the repetitive duplicate labels as would most 
legacy 6809 assemblers.  In essence, I'm just simplifying the files so 
there's a good chance that the modified files I'm making would still 
work on whatever assembler you're using.

>
>> Brett's loader allows the OS9Boot file to be placed anywhere on the disk
> so the use of a 'gen' program is no longer necessary.  If you want to
> modify or change around which modules are in your bootfile then you simply
> do it and re-boot.  He has taken a lot of the hassle out of the process.
> However, I know that at some time I will erroneously create a boot file
> that will not boot and then I'll be stuck (yes, I could switch back to DECB
> and use DW but I don't want to do that).  So I want to create a boot loader
> than can not only use the OS9Boot file but also, as a fail-safe, another
> file such as OS9Boot.safe could be optionally selected in case I get myself
> in such a bind.
>
> Excelent idea.  Nothings really stopping us from having mutiple boot
> files.  With a touch more work, you could mod my work to load the os9
> modules individually - have a text file somewhere that has a list of
> modules to load.
>
> brett

That's an interesting idea.  I hadn't thought of that.  When I finish up 
what I'm doing I'll send it over to you to try out.

Dave