BETA VERSION 2 RELEASE NOTES:

Note that everything in the notes for Alpha's 1 to 3, and Beta 1, still apply. These will eventually all be merged into one document.

Please report any problems, bugs found, questions, etc. in the Discord NitrOS9eou group, or via email to me @ curtisboyle@sasktel.net.

Quick note: As usual, "real life" interfered tremendously with getting as much done as either Bill or I would have liked, but there is some good stuff/improvements in this release, particularly for 6809 users this time around. There is much more planned, and actively being worked on by both Bill and myself, so stay tuned!

QUICK NOTE ON STARTUP FILE:
The current startup file loads all system fonts, and a couple of batches of small, commonly used utilities (which makes the system seem faster once it is booted). However, if you would rather start with the bare minimum (just the one 40 column window, no utilities/fonts, etc. pre-loaded) you can simply hold down a SHIFT key while it is booting, and it will bring you to the shell much more quickly.

QUICK NOTE ABOUT VCC:
Since RUNB and BASIC09 are starting to get fully 6309 optimized, and VCC has incomplete support for the 6309, you may start hitting glitches (the hardware divided instructions in particular). This does not affect the 6809 versions. The 6309 versions will run fine on real hardware, or on MAME. 

NOTE: This is now being actively worked on (as well as making VCC cross platform). Stay tuned on the Cocolist for details and updates. NOTE: We have nothing to do with that project.

On the 6309 image, I have made pre-merged special RUNB (/dd/cmds/runb_alpha3) that contains the older version from Alpha 3 that shouldn't use those instructions, but it does include the new GFX2 (See below), for those of you using VCC. If you are going to go that route, do a LOAD /dd/cmds/runb_alpha3 after booting, to make sure that you have the older, more VCC compatible version loaded, and you hopefully won't hit any issues.

QUICK NOTE ON FUTURE UPDATES:
Since we are doing public Betas now, one thing we need to worry about is people making changes/additions/customizations to the images themselves. Since we are sending out hard drive images "pre-built", this would wipe out any said changes you may have done. So, this is a warning to back these up before getting the new image(s), and copy them back over afterwards. It might be easier if you create your own directory and keep all of your new stuff in it (easier to back it up). You can then either back these up to a new floppy or floppy image, or copy them to a Windows/Mac/Linux box using the varying utilities that are around for that purpose (like Toolshed, etc.). On a real Coco or MAME, you could even have a 2nd hard drive image for all of your local stuff (VCC, at this time, only supports 1 hard drive image mounted at a time).
If you go the floppy/floppy image route, and you have made your own directory of your additions, you should be able to do a CD <your directory name>, and then do MSCOPY -alm * <your backup floppy name, like /d1) #56k. This will copy all files and sub-directories (like DSAVE, but *much* faster) as long as you have enough disk space.
If you find your stuff is too big, you can try compressing them first with one of two archive compression programs (please note that both add their own extension automatically - .ar or .lzh):
AR (AR -u <archive filename> <filenames to compress>). This is faster than the other method but doesn't compress quite as well. It also only does subdirectories if you manually specify them, and can only handle a certain number of files at a time (you can do it several chunks; the -u means "update archive", which means you can create an archive with some files, and then run AR -u again with different files and it will combine them into the same archive. Extracting preserves attributes, and will create directories as needed automatically, and doesn't have a limit to the number of files you are extracting, unlike when it is compressing.
The other option is LHA. It compresses better (but slower), and has a ton more options, but is more complicated to use. I don't believe it has a (reasonable) limit to the number of files to compress. Recommended usage for our situation here is:
LHA a -xpr <archive filename> *
Again, run from your new directory, and this will automatically do all sub-directories as well. The options used are: 'a' (add to archive - will create a new one if your archive filename doesn't exist, or add any new files to an existing one). The '-xpr' is actually 3 options: x means allow extended filenames, p means to keep full paths, and r means recurse through sub-directories.
To restore, CD to the directory you want to restore into, and then LHA x -l <archive filename>. This will extract the entire archive, with paths, and show the paths on screen while it is extracting.

CHANGES FROM BETA 1:

1) Thanks to Rick Adams for pointing out that the source code for ADVENT (adventure game) was accidentally in /dd/sourcecode/asm... when it is actually C source code. This has been moved to the proper /dd/sourcecode/c directory.

2) Added BASIC09 source code (in /dd/sourcecode/basic09) 'getput_text_demo.b09' to show demonstration of using Get/Put buffers on hardware text screens.

3) Many thanks to Bill Nobel for fixing a long outstanding issue with CoWin trying allocate an extra 16K from the system map to load Grfdrv (net result - your OS9Boot file had to be shrunk to allow this to work). It is now loaded externally, and the 6809/EOU now has the extra window and VDG descriptors added back in to match the 6309/EOU. In the future, this will also allow adding to and speeding up grfdrv on both 6809 and 6309 versions (the 6309 version includes these patches, too). In fact, this work has already started (see below).

4) Added BASIC09 source code (in /dd/sourcecode/basic09) 'Hware_Transparent.b09' to show demonstration of using Transparent characters in a hardware text screen (foreground color, underline and blinking follow what you have set, but the background color remains whatever is under the character already).

5) Added more up to date versions of SHELL, DATE and UNLINK (CLS command was missing in Shell, for example)

6) IDENT has been updated to edition #9. This fixes a bug where it wouldn't ident files that have a dash '-' in their filename (it was just exit with no error). The code is also crunched down a little bit, so even with the added code, it is smaller than edition #8.

7) Grfdrv in the 6809 version has some minor speed optimizations in it for testing, scattered throughout. Please let us know if you hit any problems (test against Beta 1, to let us know if it is a bug that happened between Beta 1 and Beta 2, or if it is a longer standing bug). 
It also has some specific spots with more noticable speed improvements:
  a) GPLoads (Get/Put buffer loads) should be faster for larger buffers.
  b) PutBlk and overlay windows (especially wide ones on graphics screens)
  c) full width screen scrolling (text and graphics modes)

8) There are VERY minor tweaks to the 6309 grfdrv as well.

9) Added FILES command - does wildcards, and outputs one filename per line (helpful for reading through directories, etc. that you can pipe or save into an output file, rather than have to write your own wildcard parser).

L. Curtis Boyle, November 30, 2018

P.S. Work is continuing on new manuals (BASIC09 first) that will incorporate the updates that have been done in NitrOS-9/EOU over the years compared to the original Tandy/Microware manuals, so eventually we hope to have a modern, up to date version to go along with the hard drive images for everyone to work from. But this is a BIG project, so it will be awhile (we will likely release it in chunks, based on the sections in the original OS-9 Level II manual). This will include updates to existing system calls (corrections and/or additional features), as well as newly added/previously undocumented ones.