[Coco] Booting OS9 on my CoCo 3

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 08 August 2017 10:19:12 Dave Philipsen wrote:

> On 8/8/2017 8:05 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > And it needs the softer magnetically "DD" diskettes to have good
> > data retention.  At this late date, there simply is no way a taped
> > over HD diskette will last this long. That would explain the
> > re-seeking as its trying to read a track thats faded because it
> > wasn't recorded at enough record head drive.
>
> Actually it doesn't sound like it's re-seeking.  It just sounds like
> it steps faster to a new place on the disk and then it just doesn't do
> anything.  Maybe it's the ramdisk thing although I would think that I
> would see/hear more progress of OS9 booting before it died.
>
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett

That sounds like its loading the boot track (34) then the faster stepping 
boot module in that track is stepping to LSN0 to get the OS9Boot files 
address and size out of LSN0, and failing. Thats how it locates the 
OS9Boot file since at that point in the boot its not smart enough to 
locate the root directory since its not at a fixed location, and read it 
from its FD sector. I would think it would say FAILED, but that track 
might be partially gone too. I don't recall ATM whence the failed 
message comes from. Darn it.

I don't think that disk will ever boot it. Its likely got alzheimers aka 
oldtimers.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
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