On 8/5/2012 7:49 PM, boisypitre@gmail.com wrote:
Just a follow-up. I did some more reading and see you are trying to boot OS-9 from a floppy disk.
I'm very happy to read this post because as I see it the hardware is operational but there is a real need for software drivers.
The OS9 boots fine from the floppy, but there are no easy ways to communicate with the outside world. The serial driver should be very easy: virtually every Apple 2e has a "super serial" card based on 6551 - a rather standard ACIA for the 68xx hardware. A driver that could use DriveWire over this serial port would be a great addition. On top of that I think there is a need for a disk driver that can talk to some modern mass storage device - say CFFA.
Before this project I knew next to nothing about the OS9. After a few hours of playing with it and browsing the NitrOS9 sources I got pretty interested. I'm even thinking of designing a new 6809 board for Apple that would be similar in concept to the PCPI Applicard just as the Mill is similar to the SoftCard. The new card should run a 68B09 at 2 MHz, have a minimum of 128K of RAM on board, an MMC card for mass storage and communicate with the Apple bus via a couple of shared registers.
Since this would be a unique design not compatible with any existing hardware it only makes sense to start it if it is clear who will write the drivers. Even before the final hardware implementation is done we can implement such a system on the Carte Blanche.
-Alex.