fall@ektools.UUCP (Jeff Fall) (02/27/90)
The joys and pitfalls of OS-9. I have recently `discovered' OS-9 and have a lot of plans to perform process control with it for radio control, (ham repeaters). I have been struggling to get a decent development system up and running with a hard disk and the Microware `C' coompiler. After a weekend of fighting with B&B documentation, cabling and dd controller cards, I finally have a hard disk /H0 on line, (sort of). I would like to pose a list of questions probably anyone who has installed a B&B hard drive adapter/software package might pose. Some of these are simply problems I have no solution (yet) fo. 1) Does anyone have the exact data for an ST125 Seagate Hard disk? mine is from a stripped AT and I don't have a data sheet. I used the values supplied by B&B but question the accuracy of such values. 2) I had little success using OS9gen to alter the base system or gen. as supplied by Tandy. I followed B&B's manual on using DDmaker to produce a device descriptor for the Seagate ST125. I selected the full function devioce driver: BBFhdisk.dr. I loaded both H0.dd and BBFhdisk.dr into the MODULES directory of the CONFIG disk. I ran config and selected the default D0_35S drive and the new H0 entry which showed up at the bottom of the menu. Config ran smoothly and produced a bootable floppy. Upon booting the floppy, OS-9 comes up and I was able to format the hard drive and store files on it. I tried then to format a floppy on /D0 and am returned a ERROR #244. To check the build, I ran config again and selected all previous devices except the H0 hard disk. Booted new gen and was able to format /D0 flawlessly. I'm wondering if the drivers for /H0 and /D0 are interfering with each other? B&B is `XT 2.4b' release and OS-9 is level II on a CoCo III. Floppy is FD-502. 3) I've been trying to run the CRC Superpak in slot 1 using /T2. When I try to copy to /T2, the system hangs. Are there some configuration issues not in the documentation? 4) I'm using to Western Digital `GEN' series of hd disk controller. I soldered the B&B bootable ROM into the controller and am not able to boot or produce even an error when I have selected slot 3 which is where the hd controller lives. It's like the CoCo can't even see the ROM in the controller. Do I have to strap addresses on the WD GEN hd controller card?? B&B doesn't address GEN card configuration. Many thanks to OS-9 Gurus and hackers who can help me untangle all of this. Yours in =stable configurations, Jeff Fall
joew@qat.UUCP (03/01/90)
> /* Written 9:14 pm Feb 26, 1990 by ektools.UUCP!fall in qat:comp.os.os9 */ > /* ---------- "Formatting problems with OS-9" ---------- */ > > [stuff deleted] > I would like to pose a list of questions probably anyone who has > installed a B&B hard drive adapter/software package might pose. Some > of these are simply problems I have no solution (yet) fo. > 1) Does anyone have the exact data for an ST125 Seagate Hard disk? > mine is from a stripped AT and I don't have a data sheet. I used the > values supplied by B&B but question the accuracy of such values. > > 2) I had little success using OS9gen to alter the base system or gen. > as supplied by Tandy. I followed B&B's manual on using DDmaker to > produce a device descriptor for the Seagate ST125. I selected the > full function devioce driver: BBFhdisk.dr. I loaded both H0.dd > and BBFhdisk.dr into the MODULES directory of the CONFIG disk. > I ran config and selected the default D0_35S drive and the new > H0 entry which showed up at the bottom of the menu. Config > ran smoothly and produced a bootable floppy. Upon booting > the floppy, OS-9 comes up and I was able to format the hard > drive and store files on it. I tried then to format a floppy > on /D0 and am returned a ERROR #244. > To check the build, I ran config again and selected all previous > devices except the H0 hard disk. Booted new gen and was able to format > /D0 flawlessly. I'm wondering if the drivers for /H0 and /D0 are > interfering with each other? B&B is `XT 2.4b' release and OS-9 is > level II on a CoCo III. Floppy is FD-502. I had similar problems on my first attempts so I called for technical assistance from B&B. Chris Burke suggested that the problem was the BLOB (Boot List Order Bug) and recommended that I use his bootfile generator EZGen to rearrange the order of the boot file. His suggestion was to move the files around until I got RBF in the address range of &h2000 - &h2400 or &h4000 - &h4400 (I think that these are the correct address). This did improve the performance some but not totally. I then decided to rearrange the list order until I had RBF drivers and descriptors in this order; RBF CC3Disk D0 D1 dd BBFhdisk H0 > > [stuff deleted] > > 4) I'm using to Western Digital `GEN' series of hd disk > controller. I soldered the B&B bootable ROM into the controller > and am not able to boot or produce even an error when > I have selected slot 3 which is where the hd controller lives. > It's like the CoCo can't even see the ROM in the controller. > Do I have to strap addresses on the WD GEN hd controller card?? > B&B doesn't address GEN card configuration. Do a POKE &hFFDE,0 and PEEK the two bytes &hC000 and &hC001, if they are not D and K respectively then you probably got one of the bad batch of ROM's like I did. Extended basic will not read the ROM into ram and execute it unless these are the first two bytes out there. All I had to do was call B&B and they sent me the correct ROM. JTW