Hi Dave,
 
If we can get the 'No holes' CF card layout to be compliant with cpmtool 
then that has to be the way to go as it will make life much easier.
As I said in a previous post, I welcome this 'no holes' lba to be picked 
apart to get it right before we go too far down the road and find problems 
later.
 
I'm a little busy at the moment with various other aspects of my S100 
system with the little time I have to spend on it,(summer is coming after 
all :-) )
If you can knock together a quick image with a CPMLDR.COM and CPM3.SYS 
(doesnt matter what system it's for) then we could take a look to see how 
the layout differs.
My layout was derived from where CPMLDR was looking to find data.
 
regards
 
David Fry
On Saturday, June 14, 2014 7:30:00 PM UTC+1, yoda wrote:

> why not take a look at the cpmtools set.  It has a program called mkfs.cpm 
> that will make a file as a cpm filesystem.  You can specify a boot image 
> which it will lay down in the boot sectors.  You can then use cpmcp to copy 
> files to the cpm filesystem.  Then you can take the file and write it block 
> by block to the CF card.  I did this originally to get my system up and 
> running.  I actually used dd (a utility on linux or Mac) to write it to the 
> CF.  I actually wrote a little script to take the file image and add the 
> "holes" back in so it would work with your BIOS.  I went back and tried it 
> with the no hole version and had some difficulties that I have not 
> straightened out yet.  I don't know if I did something wrong or David Fry's 
> LBA routine is not doing what I thought it did.  I have not gone back and 
> investigated yet but with David's help we can probably probably get this 
> resolved.  The procedure  would go like this: 
>
> 1) mkfs.cpm -f s100ide -b dummy.file -b CPMLDR.COM s100.dsk
>
> where s100ide is an entry in diskdefs that specifies the geometry of the 
> drive
> dummy.file is a 512 byte empty file to get CPMLDR.COM to be in the 
> correct sector start.
> s100.dsk is the file that represent the disk image.
>
> 2) cpmcp -f s100ide s100.dsk CPM3.SYS 0:
>     cpmcp -f s100ide s100.dsk <cpm file> 0:     copies <cpm file> to user 
> area 0 on disk image
>     continue until you have all the files you want on the disk
>
> 3) use a disk image write tool (dd on Linux or Mac) to write s100.dsk to 
> CF card
>
> Here is a link to the cpmtools:  http://www.moria.de/~michael/cpmtools/   
> These tools run on Windoze for those that use that OS and easily compiled 
> for Mac or Linux.
>
> This is the way I am building my images for CP/M 68K that I am currently 
> working on.
>
> I think getting the diskdefs set write and a good writeLBA routine and we 
> should be able to get the procedure down.
>
> Dave
>
> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 11:31:49 AM UTC-5, monahanz wrote: 
>>
>>  Guys, it’s great to see all the progress and uptake this simple little 
>> IDE board has generated.  Thomas in particular congratulations on 
>> putting so much time and effort into “hammering into shape” the process for 
>> first time installs.  It helps tremendously but I think it will still be 
>> difficult for some people to do.   We all should remember how it was 
>> when we first started!
>>
>>  
>>
>> I’m wondering if somebody out there could spend the time writing a 
>> PC/MSDOS based program to setup a CF card for first time users.  If we 
>> agree the IDE board ports start at 30H, the only variable would be the 
>> console I/O.  This could be either spliced into the final disk image 
>> with the above program (leaving room in the base code with NOP’s) or by 
>> answering a Q&A session and inserting code like the old XMODEM programs did. 
>>  
>> A CF card is laid down as Dave describes and is checked out. Once the 
>> image is laid down it can be dumped sector for sector any  CF card (no 
>> holes of course).  The image can even include a few CPM programs.  Probably 
>> best to start with a non-banked CPM3 image.  This program would run on a 
>> standard PC, format the CF card and write the image sector by sector.  Not 
>> sure if Windows 7,8 allows you to do that easily but there must be a way.
>>
>>  
>>
>> This would allow anybody not as sophisticated as some of us, to get going 
>> right away and allow them to write more elaborate CPM3.SYS files that 
>> include a FDC, printer etc. in the BIOS for their own hardware.
>>
>> I think something like this would be a tremendous asset for first time 
>> S100 users.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Any volunteers?
>>
>> John
>>
>>  
>>
>>  
>>
>

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