Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

27 Jan 2014

...
 It's working again!

I made a new RL02 pack using vtserver on my other machine (11/23+), which takes a while to
transmit 7.8 MB even at 19200 baud, put it in the 8/A drive 0, held my breath, flipped the
boot switch... and got the "." prompt on the terminal :)

So the problem that started this whole mess was an IDC connector that I had improperly
crimped, inside one of the RL02 drives, so that I could run ribbon cable to the RL8A
instead of buying the expensive BC80xx cable. Lesson learned. Bought a BC80J-20!

That short circuit was somewhere in the write data lines, which apparently then wiped out
the OS/8 pack so it wouldn't boot any more. 

Lastly, my incorrectly seated quad extender card was introducing errors even after fixing
the cable problems, and I wasted several hours chasing that... I may invest in a
hex-height extender card to avoid this problem in the future!

On the other hand, I now have a serial interface on the desktop PC from which I can
download programs direct to the 8/A. The next thing is to learn how to use Philipp
Hachtmann's KL8E in FPGA to download through a laptop USB port at high speed. It looks
like I can just change the few IOT instructions of the RIM and BIN loaders to match the
card's switch settings. Trying to get Windows to put binary files out a USB port will
be more fun, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, back to the original problem! My build of OS/8 does not recognize that there
are two RL02 drives in the system... which is how I think this thread got started in the
first place quite some time ago :)

More info. OS/8 is running on Drive 0. I am able to use RLFRMT (or
RL2FMT) to format the pack in Drive 1 (and it does not access or
overwrite Drive 0)... so at least SOME part of OS/8 recognizes that
there are two RL02 drives!

BUILD defaults to DSK=SYS if SYS is not changed. BUILD showed
initially DSK=RL20:R2A0 which is indeed the same as SYS.

However, if a SYS command is issued during BUILD, according to the
manual when issuing the BOOT command it is supposed to ask if you want
a new DSK or not. This does not happen - it just says "SYS BUILT" and
goes back to the dot prompt.

I found that I can manually type DSK=RL21:R2A1 in BUILD and it accepts
that without error. Then a "SAVE SYS BUILD 0-7577, 10000-17577=0;200"
per the manual.
At that point, rubbing BUILD again shows DSK=RL21:R2A1. OK so far.

But when I ask OS/8 for the directories of each partition on RL21:
(R2A1, R2B1, R2C1, R2D1) what is displayed is the corresponding
directory of RL20: (R2A0, R2B0, R2C0, R2D0)! The Drive 1 light never
flashes.

RESORC shows the following:

(6442) 37*
(6542) 37
(6642) 37*
(6742) 37*
(6443) 37*
(6543) 37*
(6643) 37
(6743) 37
OS/8 V3T

so it looks like there are eight different partitions in RESORC,
although not all of them have an "*" (does that mean the same
"active"
as it does in BUILD)?

I'm wondering if DSK is, in fact, *not* being changed to the other
drive - but then why is there not an error when attempting to get a
directory of, say, RL21:R2A1 if it still thinks I'm accessing
RL20:R2A0?

This has me stumped. Any OS/8 gurus, please help :)