Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!brahms.berkeley.edu!koonce
From: koonce@brahms.berkeley.edu (tim koonce)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m6809
Subject: Re: ARTICLE
Summary: The Boot List Order Bug is partly hardware
Message-ID: <16634@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Nov 88 23:04:16 GMT
References: <8811071544.AA29817@decwrl.dec.com>
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Reply-To: koonce@brahms.berkeley.edu (tim koonce)
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In article <8811071544.AA29817@decwrl.dec.com> akermanis@trco01.dec.com writes:
>
>Because of this change, I OS9GEN'd a new boot disk. The HD booted just fine
>and all seemed well. I tried to write to the floppies, and kept getting
>Write Verification errors or you could not create a new boot volume.
>
>All I did was reshuffle CC3DISK around and BINGO, everything works fine
>now.
>
>Any thoughts on this problem or cure ?
>
>John Akermanis

You've encountered the now-famous Boot List Order Bug (BLOB).  It has
been partly diagnosed as hardware timing problems.  Basically, most
coco peripherals weren't really well designed for the 1.8 meg clock
speed, so there's marginal bus timing for many things.  Floppy
controllers seem especially susceptible for some reason.  Nobody
really knows of a good fix, although specific hardware vendors,
specifically Burke&Burke, and Bruce Isted, have been experimenting
with ways to lessen the likelihood of problems.

Welcome to a large crowd of people with boot-list problems.  The only
known fix is to re-order your boot modules.  A number of articles came
down comp.sys.m6809, comp.sys.os9, and the coco mailing list recently
about this.

Note:  One floppy problem that seems to be especially prevalent is
failures when formatting.  Whenever you put together a new boot, try
formatting a floppy disk.  If that works, then there's a good chance
you've found a good order.  Otherwise, try a new boot list order.


					- Tim Koonce