OS9 tools for the CoCoSDC

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bluearcus
Posts: 142
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 4:45 pm

OS9 tools for the CoCoSDC

Post by bluearcus »

Hi all,

After some grumbling about the CoCoSDC not being very usable under OS9 on the Dragon... here are a set of tools to make it easy to do the usual things you might want to do - Show details of or change mounted images, show or change the current working directory, show a directory listing etc.

These are mostly ports of Barry Nelson and Tim Lindner's work for the CoCo, but the functionality has been re-organised somewhat so the grouping under different commands is a little more logical (to my mind), and there's a new 'cd' style command, schd, for changing the working directory or showing the current working directory path. They should work under OS9 or Nitros9 with both the vanilla DDisk floppy driver and the RBSuper/LlCocoSDC native driver.

The attached zip contains
* Commands and source code on an os9 format disk image (80 Track, double sided, effectively a headerless DSK)
* A command summary sheet (PDF)
Dragon CoCoSDC OS9 tools.zip
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Azerpy
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:16 pm
Location: France Pyrenées

Re: OS9 tools for the CoCoSDC

Post by Azerpy »

Hello Mike,
I found that very interesting at the moment you posted it, but as a beginner, OS9 is a very long and winding road for me.
So, I have upgraded two Dragons 32 (the SECAM one, very easy, and a PAL one).
The 64 K ram looks good with the MMC board and FLEX or EDITPLUS.
For use of the COCOSDC board, I have installed pull up resistors and, with a correct OS9 disk, (after POKE &HFF03 ... for upgraded Dragon 32)
I can boot OS9 Level 1 V2 and play with DIR, CHD, LIST ...
Now, with your disk attached in the second drive, the /D1/CMDS directory cannot be read and seems empty.
I don't know what to do with the files in the /D1/SRC directory.
So ....
Where are the command files SDRIVE, SDIR, SDC ?
have I to assemble the xxx.ASM files ?
I am not in hurry for an answer
Gérard
bluearcus
Posts: 142
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 4:45 pm

Re: OS9 tools for the CoCoSDC

Post by bluearcus »

Hi Gérard,

Probably the issue is the original Dragon OS9 disk driver, which doesn't handle double sided and 80 track drives properly. Often you can see the root directory, but nothing else! Or the driver produces errors because it's trying to access sectors beyond the range it considers possible. And the result can also be corrupted disks...

I'd suggest changing to use one of Soren Roug's updated Dragon OS9 boot disks. These have year 2000 fixes, and an updated 80 track and double sided capable disk driver.

https://www.roug.org/retrocomputing/os/os9/dragon64

In OS9 you tend to need three things to be right... the disk hardware (or floppy image), the device driver, and also the device descriptor. In the old days, device descriptors didn't tend to change regularly because a drive has specific geometry. Nowadays with emulated floppies, we can find that the geometry changes regularly as we swap in and out different images! So an appropriate device descriptor (80 track, double sided) should always be used. Without the right driver and descriptor, things tend to be painful ;)

Hopefully that helps... if not let me know and we can investigate further!

Kind regards,

Mike
Azerpy
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:16 pm
Location: France Pyrenées

Re: OS9 tools for the CoCoSDC

Post by Azerpy »

Hello Mike
Yes, you give us the very good solution.
With the OS9 boot 720 k disk of Soren Roug, all is OK.
I can see all the files in the two disks
I enter CHX /D1/CMDS to change the working execution directory (perhaps not the best way ?)
and then SDC, SDRIVE, SDIR, SCHD commands are for me, and for all of us !
No more painful :)
Thank you Mike.
Gérard
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