VCC Emulator

Introduction

On this page I will try to explain (as best I can), the setup and use of the VCC Color Computer 3 emulator and the Becker port

Now, since the Becker Port version of VCC has been released, I've already seen a myrad of question fly across the Coco newsgroup. I've seen a lot of people complaining that they can't get it to work or this or that feature no longer works, so first I will state that almost nothing has been changed in the original operation of VCC. Most of the problems I see people having is that they've run the old version for so long that they've forgotten that they had to set it up in the config menus and the "ini" file to get it to the current state. The new version has all new defaults and therefore needs to be setup once again. I would not advise copying the old "ini" file over the new as the new file contains the defaults for the Becker port and overwriting it with the old file will destroy this and you will have to configure the Becker port manually.

Installing VCC

The first step is to install the new VCC 2.01b. To do this just double click the "vcc_setup.exe" in the download package. This will automatically install VCC to your C:\Program Files\VCC on a 32 bit Windows system or to C:\Program Files (x86)\VCC on a 64 bit Windows system. It will also add a VCC launch icon to your start menu and desktop. In your Start Menu under "VCC" you will find the link to start the program as well as a link to the VCC manual in PDF form and a "readme" text file explaining some of the aspects of the Becker port. I will try to exdplain the Becker port and it's use a little better here as well as give some guidance to setting up Vcc to you personal style of Color Computer usage.

Deciding on your VCC usage

The next thing to do is to decide how you are going to use VCC. Do you want to use NitrOS-9 or do you use mostly RSDOS based programs? Or do you like to run a hybrid system that will allow you to run both... individually of course. Also you will have to decide if you want to use the Becker port. In VCC this basically means do you want to access the DriveWire 4 server? The Becker port in VCC is currently just 2 unused port addresses ($FF41 & $FF42) assigned to communitcate to the host PC's TCP socket to allow communication with the outside world. For now, the only implementation is for the DriveWire 4 server. There are many things that could be done with this but for now, we'll concentrate on DriveWire.

If you have no intentions of using DriveWire 4, then you would just use VCC as you always have and follow the instructions in the manual. The built-in RGBDOS ROM is basically the same as the HDBDOS ROM but without the DriveWire support. But if you want to use DriveWre 4 (DW4) with RSDOS or NitrOS-9 there are some special instructions that you need to follow to get it all working properly and to your liking. We will start with RSDOS as that is usually the trickiest part to get right.

Included in the installation package are 2 special roms, HDBDW3BC3.rom and HDBDW3BCK.rom

HDBDW3BC3.rom is strictly for Coco 3 prorgams or any program that does not rely on the clock for it's speed and can run the double speed poke at all times as this rom run double speed as a default.

HDBDW3BCk.rom is mainly for those Coco 2 programs that would run too fast witht the double speed clock activated. This includes most Coco 2 games and some Coco 3 software.

These roms can be switched at any time from within the VCC menu and an emulator reset will activate the rom. Changing roms will most likely loose all data currently on the machine so save your work before attempting this.

Setting the MPI (MultiPak Interface)

First make sure the Multipak Interface emulator has been installed by click the "Cartridge" tab on the title bar. You should see another "Cartridge" selection and clicking this selection should show the MPI as loaded. If not, click "Load Cart" and browse to the directory where Vcc is installed and click on "MPI.DLL". Now underneath the cartridge selection, you should see the 4 MPI slots.

In slot 4, select the FD502.DLL for the disk controller.

In slot 3, select the harddisk.DLL as the HD controller. This controller will also give you a realtime clock if needed.

I use slot 2 for the orch90.DLL to give me access to the Orchestra 90 8 bit dacs in turn giving me 8 bit stereo sound through the PC's soundcard.

While in the Cartridge menu, select the MPI Config option. Set the slot selector for slot 4.

Setting the Disk Controllers

For Using the HDBDOS ROM, next, from within the Cartridge menu, select the "FD-502 Config" option. Here is where we will determine what OS is loaded into the emulator on startup. In the popup, make sure the "External Rom Image" checkbox is selected in the upper left. Next click "Browse" in the bottom right hand corner of the window and find the HDBDOS rom that you want to use. Using these options, we are replacing the RSDOS rom with the HDBDOS which is 99.99% compatable with the RSDOS rom. Now make sure "Overclock Disk Drive" is checked unless you want emulation of old, slow drive speeds. Also click "Persistant Disk Images" which will save what disk images are loaded when you exit Vcc and load them when you start again later. Even if you are going to use OS-9 exclusively, I recommend having an RSDOS partition on your drive for booting purposes as well as a few other things.

While changing all these options, you may have seen VCC reset itself once or twice but that's Ok. You can now close the FD-502 Config menu.

Most other options you in the "Cartrige" menu can be left at their default value. You may find later that you want to change these but please read the manual to see what each feature does. Some features can render the Becker port unusable, so know what you're doing first.

Next we get to probably the only "tricky" part to installing HDBDOS and from what I've seen on the forums, this seems to be the most misunderstood part of HDBDOS. We must select our Virtual Hard Drive (vhd) and set the HDBDOS offsets. Offsets? you say? Yes, offsets. If the particular vhd image you are going to use has ONLY an RSDOS partition, then you do not need to set the offsets as HDBDOS will find it as default offset of 0. But, if the vhd image has an OS-9 partion as well, then the OS-9 partition will occupy the first partition of the drive and you must tell HDBDOS where the RSDOS partitionn starts. This is where it gets tricky.

Setting the HDBDOS/RSDOS partition offsets

To set HDBDOS to use both OS-9 and RSDOS, you must set offsets within HDBDOS to let HDBDOS know where the RSDOS partition starts. This can be done in one of three ways.

The first was is to poke the values into HDBDOS once VCC has started. The major drawback of this method is that these pokes have to be done every time you run VCC or do a cold start. Also with this method, you have no RSDOS VHD access until the offsets are set. Though OS-9 will boot fine from a floppy disk image and access the VHD with it's DW drivers.

To poke the offsets values into HDBDOS, you must first know where your RSDOS partition resides. Luckilly, Robert Gault has provided a utility that will tell you what the offsets are for your RSDOS partition. This utility is name "SPECS.BAS" and should be on your "HDBDOS Tools" disk. Your floppy disk emulator within VCC will be accessable even though you cannot access the hard drive yet. So load the "HDBDOS Tools.dsk" into Drive 0 and type "DIR". You should see the SPECS.BAS" program. Type RUN"SPECS".