CoCo RULES!!

Earlier today I got an email from Boisy Pitre, one of my on-line friends who develops Mac software, and as a hobby, supports our common interest, the Tandy Color Computer running NitrOS-9 (which is an operating system very similar to UNIX and Linux -- many very similar commands in the shell -- but which was designed to run in a 64kB space under the Motorola 68B09E processor). He wrote to the CoCoList:

Aside from Aaron [Wolfe], Jim [Hathaway] and I attempting this (with slightly buggy software), this is probably a first.

If you want to play around with NitrOS-9/6309 Level 2, then telnet to my system. I have tsmon running on ports t0-t6, although t0 isn't working for some reason. That leaves 6 ports that can be in use simultaneously.

Press ENTER when connected. You should see the tsmon login prompt, though depending on how other users disconnected, you may see a shell prompt when you press ENTER.

To get to it:

telnet aes.dyndns.org 6809

Good luck and please let me know how it works.
--
Boisy G. Pitre
http://www.tee-boy.com/

So, I fired up the x11 terminal on my iMac, and did this:



Kewl, sez I! Notice my error because it has been so long since I did any file creation in the shell (a decade and a half is a l-o-o-o-o-ng time!).

Telnet connection to a shell on a remote 8-bit machine with six simultaneous users. That used to only be possible on the same wire in the same building. The CoCo enters the 21st Century.

Flop

Well, that didn't work. Disk 2 had an error on it; the system required a reboot, and the ROM couldn't find a Mac OS because, like I was afraid, the whole drive had been reformatted for Linux.

Did a reformat, and I'm back to a 500meg OS9 partition and a 3.2gig spare partitons (Mac HFS).

Maybe I'll set my sights a little lower tomorrow, and try installing Sagittarius.

Bow Yow!

OK, so I gave up on Ubuntu. The installer kept hanging up and dumping me into a command line interface from which it was impossible to move forward with my limited Linux shell programming skills (maybe I'll get better?). So I took the alternate route, and checked out Yellow Dog. Turns out there was a recent release (5.0.1, Phoenix) just a week or so ago. I downloaded the 6 .iso CDs, then dounloaded the 4 .iso CDs for v 4.1 (Sagittarius) and the 3 .iso CDs for v 3.0.1 (Sirius), just in case. Yellow Dog seemed to have better support features (although warning that Old World Macs are unsupported beyond v 4.0) and guides for installing each version.

It seems to be working. The install image has been copied to the hard drive, and the 900+ application packages are being installed as of now. There was a little confusion with regard to the drive formatting; I am hoping all the formatter did was hit the Linux partition and leave the little Mac partition alone. I'll find out when it is time to reboot -- if it doesn't work, I can always go back to the Mac install CD, reformat the drive, and start over.

I guess this is why so many people are afraid of Linux. There are so many machines with so many flavors of installer that you have to hit the right combination. On the other hand, it's free, and the application suites are free, and in terms of performance, it makes old machines function like new ones.

Everything has tradeoffs.

Shell Game

Well, from my reply to Michael in the previous post, you can see that I get to a shell prompt (BusyBox's ash) but am not having any luck from there out. I've even altered the command line in BootX, adding some variables that other attemptees have posted on-line. The Ubuntu install just won't go to completion at this time.

Ah, well. Ubuntu DOES say that the later releases are not supported on Old World Macs. Still, there are people who have done the difficult. I intend to eventually be one of them. In the meantime, I might have to try a Yellow Dog release.