Re: GS-OS problems!

[bogawa@cloudburst.seas.ucla.edu (Bryan K. Ogawa)]

Dave Althoff (dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:

[deleted]

> Just today, I bought a ROM 01 GS with a VOC, 5Mb RAM, and a Vulcan 20Mb
> hard drive, set up as one big GS-OS System 6 partition.

Cool! I hope you enjoy it.

> Here's the problem:  every time I boot the machine, it boots to the hard
> drive.  By itself, no big deal.  But I have a lot of stuff that runs off
> of floppy, too (mostly DOS 3.3 stuff).  Right now, to boot off the floppy
> I have to do one of two things--

> a.  Interrupt the boot process with my favorite key (which used to be
> labelled "RESET" but somehow turned into an arrow...) and issue the PR#5
> or PR#^ command, or...

> b.  Launch BASIC.SYSTEM out of the Finder, then issue the boot command.

> It occurs to me that I could write a quickie ASM program to automate this
> process:

> $2000:  4C 00 C6    JMP $C600   or...
> $2000:  4C 00 C5    JMP $C500
> depending on which slot I want.  Trouble is, if I store this as a binary
> file, GS/OS refuses to run it, saying that there is "no application
> associated" with the file.  And I can't seem to figure out how to store it
> as a SYS file... I tried "BSAVE BOOT6.SYSTEM,A$2000,L$06,TSYS" and got a
> PATH NOT FOUND error message.  (!).  Any tips on how I might do this?

I believe you can do this from BASIC by using the following commands:
CREATE BOOT6.SYSTEM, TSYS
followed by the above command:
BSAVE BOOT6.SYSTEM, A$2000,L$06, TSYS

I believe BASIC requires you to create the file first, for safety
reasons (or maybe to simplify the BSAVE code?)

If you want a nice, convenient shareware solution, you can check out
Eric Sheppard's ProBOOT.  I don't use it, but it is about the best
solution out there I've seen (it will boot most (all?) devices, switch
drives, and a number of other tricks...it's shareware, and should be
available from both grind.isca.uiowa.edu and ftp.cco.caltech.edu .

> And why was the "STARTUP" menu (present in the original FINDER.SYS16)
> omitted from System 6?!

Startup menu?  I'm not sure what that is.  If you're talking about the
mini-launcher (it presents a file dialog, and asks you to choose a sys or
sys16 file to launch), it's still around in System 6.  Try quitting from the
finder (not Shutdown or Restart, but Quit to previous), and you
should get the SYS16 file.

> Another related problem...
> I have Kermit.65, and I have it configured for the GS.  When I run it from
> a DOS 3.3 floppy, it works perfectly, except for a strange error message
> as it starts (something about a ProDOS error...which is very strange since
> ProDOS isn't running at the time).  In fact, I'm using it right now.  But
> I copied the files onto the hard drive ant tried to launch from the
> Finder, and the system crashed into the Monitor.  It doesn't matter
> whether I try to launch from the Finder or from BASIC.SYSTEM; either way,
> the system crashes.  Any ideas?  

hm. I don't know much about Kermit...I've used it, but I'm not familiar
with the configuaration of it.

> Or for that matter, is there a better GS terminal program with VT100
> emulation that I should FTP and download?  Hey!  I just bought a
> computer...I can't afford ProTerm just yet...!

The one I like is COMM.SYSTEM.  It's not that spectacular, but it does
have XMODEM downloads, it's fast (a lot faster than Kermit, if I remember),
and some other stuff like that.  Unfortunately, it's hard-wired to use
the GS serial port from a GS (which is annoying).

The other ones I can think of are MEGATERM which allows you to do ANSI
emulation.

And of course, the one I use at home is ANSITerm, which is very nice,
GS-specific, and not too expensive.

> --Dave Althoff, Jr.

> -- 
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--
Bryan K. Ogawa  Computer Science & Engineering, UCLA  II Infinitum  <><