So why doesn't the -speed actually speed up the floppy access speed?
Good question. I am open to suggestions. The new floppy code is at least accurate, timing wise (same cannot be said from the WD2010/1010 hard disk controller code i cobbled together).
And when I boot off the hard drive for Venix after installing, I get a watchdog timer triggering and garbage on the screen. I know there's a stack overflow issue for automatic booting, but this was booting off with the 'W' command. Or is that the issue?
Correct, both 'W' and auto-boot are affected. It is the same bug. A CPU crash (watchdog event) occurs @ the 3rd stage of the boot loader. Unfortunately i cannot find the cause. Also, the third stage pulls tricks i can't fully grasp as a 6502 guy.
In short:
the Z80 thinks it boots from floppy, when data is piped from hard disk sectors instead. The 808x does something, the WD1010 does something, and somehow too many IRQs fire...so the 808x finally stalls.The loader binary is hidden in one of the WUTIL.? files of the distribution archive - if someone wants to take a look.
Crazyc?
WUTIL comes with an extended boot loader much more capable than DEC's. Unfortunately, even the latest version (i think it was 3.2) crashes in our emulation.
Just like DEC's limited, old one The 3.0 or 3.1 archive came with Turbo Pascal source. I have it somewhere.