On 07/04/2018 08:37 AM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote: > Yeah, you do need a monitor or something to get started on either Mike > Douglas's solution or Dave Dunfield's NST. I've used both successfully. > > If you have hard-sectored disks, I can just make you a boot disk. I have > both single and double density controllers. Makes sure they are configured for the NS* native IO. If they are not your still stuck as then the OS is looking for an IO board that is foreign.
I know that as before the horizon I had the bare NS* MDS in the Altair using the SIO as serial. Putting a boot monitor in is by far the easy way out. I did that early on and it has serial transfer and embedded loader for soft sector controller. I rarely use the stock NS* system but the older one with all the changes is still in use. Hard disk (2x 31mb) makes it more useful. There is one excuse I use occasionally for pulling out the stock NS, UCSD Pascal. The first IDE. Allison > Thanks, > Jonathan > > On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 12:39 AM, dwight via cctalk <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I'm told that the N* controller can write H89 formated disk but the H89 >> controller can't do N* format. I could have that backwards but that is what >> I recall. One can't do the other. >> >> The H89 hard sectored controller is single density only, while the newer >> N* can do both single and double density, still hard sectored though. There >> is always confusion on the N* controllers as to which can do double >> density. My research indicates that the MDC-nA are single density only and >> the MDC-nDA can do both ( n is a rev. number 1, 2, 3, or 4). >> >> Dwight >> >> >> >> ________________________________ >> From: cctalk <[email protected]> on behalf of Fred Cisin via >> cctalk <[email protected]> >> Sent: Tuesday, July 3, 2018 11:08:18 AM >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: Re: Looking for North star software >> >> On Tue, 3 Jul 2018, dwight via cctalk wrote: >>> I'm not as worried about 10 hard secrtored disk. I still have the punch >>> I had made for my H89. I can create 10 sector from old 360K disk. >> If you have a working H89 (hard sectored), then you should be able to >> write a program to run on the H89 to write hard sectored disk images! >> Can it do single density 256 byte sectors? or MFM 512 byte sectors? >> >> .ASM for PCTOFLOP should be available, as a guide to what you need, but >> will need modification for the H89 disk controller. >> >> Most of the NorthStar disk images should be availablem once you've got the >> H89 writing disks from them! >> >> Once you've got the NorthStar booting CP/M plus a copy of PIP, you can >> then continue on it. >> >> >>
