Unless you are willing to break things and set them on fire - it's best to avoid this page and go to the real best place to start for NitrOS-9 Ease of Use … the OFFICIAL project site:

NitrOS-9 Ease of Use Project (lcurtisboyle.com)

EOU Beta 6 released 2020-12-24 contains easy-to-enable DriveWire … just use swapboot!

The steps below are now no longer necessary and will be kept for personal historical reference, but should NOT be used for new installs!

Everything below is entirely UNOFFICIAL and experimental.

The steps below worked for me (about the 30th time) which is no guarantee they will work for you.

I remove windows 8 through 14, the normal clock2 module, and the RAMdisk support.

These changes may BREAK Ease of Use items which Curtis and Bill have working.

Please do NOT report any issues with this hackery-foo to them that cannot be replicated using the official Ease of Use distribution files.

As they say for do-it-yourself: “You broke it, you own both halves.”

Many thanks to:

L. Curtis Boyle, Bill Nobel and many more contributors past and present for NitrOS-9 “Ease of Use” Edition.

L. Curtis Boyle, Bill Nobel, Aaron Wolfe, Boisy Pitre, Tim Linder, Tormod Volden and many more contributors past and present for NitrOS-9.

Boisy Pitre, Michael Furman, and many more contributors past and present for Drivewire and PyDriveWire.

Lee Perkins' TRS-80 Color Computer Wiki and @Tandy Color Computer 3 on the Discord for the initial steps and clues on how to get this working together.

Here's a rundown of the parts I put together to make this work:

A PyDriveWire server:

• Raspberry Pi 3 with power/etc
• Raspbian Linux for Raspberry Pi (available from the link above)

PyDriveWire:

• Python In Python to run pyDriveWire
• pyserial for Python to speak to serial ports
• pyDriveWire
• (optional) DwTerm for testing

CoCo Connection:

• Drivewire Cable - available from Cloud9
• Serial to USB Cable - many are available through online sellers - for PC or Raspberry Pi

A CoCo:

• A Tandy Color Computer 3:
  • Cloud 9 provides CoCo3 with Hitachi 6309, Protector, and Triad+ 512K/2MB upgrade as a package
  • BoysonTech can refit CoCo3's with a 6309 and the Boomerang E2 Memory
• A CoCoSDC SD card reader and SD card

NitrOS-9:

• NitrOS-9 Level 2 v3.3.0 which contains DriveWire modules
• NitrOS-9 Ease of Use Beta 5

• Setup the Raspberry Pi and Raspbian according to their documents
  • My DriveWire connection connected to /dev/ttyUSB0
• Setup pyDriveWire according to the extensive documentation
• Setup the CoCo3 and CoCoSDC according to those documents

• Copy the SDCEXP.DSK to the top level of your SD card
  • SDCARD: /SDCEXP.DSK
• Copy the nos96309l2v030300coco3_dw.dsk from NitroOS9 L2 V3.3.0 repo to your SD card:
  • SDCARD: /NITROS9/NOSL2330.VHD
• Copy the 63SDC.VHD and EOU_User.VHD from Ease of Use to the SD Card
  • SDCARD: /NITROS9/63SDC.VHD
  • SDCARD: /NITROS9/EOU_USER.VHD

Create an SDCARD /startup.cfg to load the NitrOS-9 Level 2 V3.3.0 and the Ease of Use User's hard disk images SDCARD /startup.cfg

0=NITROS9/NOSL2330.VHD
1=NITROS9/EOU_USER.VHD

For now, we don't need the Pi - we can do the first part on the CoCo itself.

With the POWER OFF, put the SDcard into the CoCoSDC and the CoCoSDC into the CoCo 3.

Power on and use DOS command to start NitrOS-9 booting.

Enter the time and date.

Once you arrive at the NitrOS-9 command prompt:

dir /h1
makdir /h1/dw
chd /dd/nitros9/6809_l2/modules/clocks
copy clock2_dw /h1/dw/clock2_dw
chd /dd/nitros9/6809_l2/modules/scf
copy scdwv.dr /h1/dw/scdwvr.dr
copy n_scdwv.dd /h1/dw/n_scdwv.dd
copy n1_scdwv.dd /h1/dw/n1_scdwv.dd
copy n2_scdwv.dd /h1/dw/n2_scdwv.dd
copy n3_scdwv.dd /h1/dw/n3_scdwv.dd
copy n4_scdwv.dd /h1/dw/n4_scdwv.dd
copy scdwp.dr /h1/dw/scdwp.dr
copy p_scdwp.dd /h1/dw/p_sdcwp.dd
chd /dd/nitros9/6809_l2/modules/rbf
copy rbdw.dr /h1/dw/rbdw.dr
copy dwio.sb /h1/dw/dwio.sb
copy x0.dd /h1/dw/x0.dd
copy x1.dd /h1/dw/x1.dd
copy x2.dd /h1/dw/x2.dd
copy x3.dd /h1/dw/x3.dd

Now we've built a folder on the EOU_USER.VHD with NitrOS-9 Drivewire bits in it.

dir /h1/dw

Make sure all of the pieces are there.

With the CoCoSDC light *off* (when all writes are complete) - power off the CoCo.

Next, configure your SDcard /startup.cfg to mount both Ease of Use images:

0=NITROS9/63SDC.VHD
1=NITROS9/EOU_USER.VHD

Put the SDcard back into the CoCo 3 and power it up.

Use the DOS command to boot NitrOS-9 Ease of Use Beta 5.

Once it is fully booted…

Use VED to edit the /dd/startup file.

Cursor down to the setime<»>/1 line and type a * and space at the beginning of the line to comment it out.

Cursor down to the end of the file and add the following lines:

 echo Starting inetd...
 iniz w15
 inetd <>>>/w15&

Use ALT+Q to save and exit /dd/startup

Last but not least comes the big step - building a new OS9boot file with DriveWire pieces in it.

kwikgen #48k

Use [L]oad to bring in modules from OS9boot on device dd.

Use [D] to delete the following modules:

• clock2
• w8 through w14
• rammer
• r0

This will free up enough space for DriveWire modules.

Next insert the following modules:

• Insert after rbf
• Module path /h1/dw
• Module rbdw.dr
• Insert after rbdw: dwio.sb
• Insert after dwio: x0.dd
• Insert after x0: x1.dd
• Insert after x1: x2.dd
• Insert after x2: x3.dd
• Insert after clock: clock2_dw
• Insert after clock2: scdwv.dr
• Insert after scdwv: n_scdwv.dd
• Insert after n: n1_scdwv.dd
• Insert after n: n2_scdwv.dd
• Insert after n: n3_scdwv.dd
• Insert after n: n4_scdwv.dd

Use the [W] to write the new OS9boot

Yes, write Kernel to track 34.

Get kernel from dd

Yes overwrite.

Now for the proof in the pudding.

Power up your Raspberry Pi and start PyDriveWire with a mounted NitrOS-9 disk.

Here's the pyDriveWire runtime configuration file I use as starting point for yours:

>>> more /home/me/.pydrivewirerc                                       
option daemonPidFile /tmp/pydrivewire.pid
option daemonLogFile /tmp/pydrivewire.log
# option port 65504
# option accept True
option uiPort 6800
option port /dev/ttyUSB0
option speed 115200
dw disk insert 0 /home/me/NOSL2330.DSK

Power up your CoCo.

At the OK prompt, simply hit DOS to boot NitrOS-9 Ease of Use Beta 5.

The first way to know if its working is that you see the “Loading utilities” message and that you are NOT prompted to set the date and time.

The DriveWire clock module is doing that for you.

Once the Shell prompt comes up, a dir /x0 should show the content of the image you have attached on the pyDriveWire server.

When inetd starts on window 15, you should see a notice on the pyDriveWire server that port 6809 (telnet) and port 8080 (http) are starting.

From the pyDriveWire server you should be able to to telnet to CoCo3:

telnet localhost 6809

While logged in over telnet, here's an example of an mdir to see all of the modules I have:

In the spirit of “Ease of Use” here is an image of the Beta 5 63SDC Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) with the above changes already applied, “ready to boot”.

63sdc_eoub5_dw-20200505-1143.vhd.gz

This image is provided as a convenience only, and I am not responsible for any damage you might cause yourself with it.

Download at your own risk.

No support is provided - for any issues, please revert to the official Ease of Use distribution.

Join us on the #nitros9eou channel on the Tandy Color Computer Discord server.

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