Hi John,
 
just to add to my previous post, once the disk layout is sorted I will 
re-write/update my original docs.
This should go some way to help ease any new users into bringing up their 
Z80.
 
regards
 
David Fry
On Monday, June 16, 2014 10:01:21 PM UTC+1, David Fry wrote:

>  Hi John,
>  
> whilst i would agree that it would be great to have the kind of Windows 
> app you mention to allow a quick start for new S100 users, I'm afraid that 
> I have very little Windows programming experience so this would be beyond 
> me to knock something together. sorry :-(
>  
> I think a good starting point though is to get the disk layout/format 
> hammered out and working with a standard CP/M tool set so that we know we 
> are operating on a known standard and then maybe someone else with the 
> appropriate programming skills could pick up from there.
>  
> regards
>  
> David Fry
> On Monday, June 16, 2014 9:42:21 PM UTC+1, monahanz wrote:
>
>>  Guys, remember in the end we need an idiot proof windows program that 
>> will prepare a CF disk prepared on a windows PC that asks for only the 
>> console status & data port, status bit true/false and boots up a non-banked 
>> CPM3 (with say, 60K of RAM)  when the first sector is placed in RAM at 80H 
>> by a monitor (or by hand).   I volunteer to be the idiot tester!
>>
>> John
>>
>>  
>>
>>  
>>
>> *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On 
>> Behalf Of *yoda
>> *Sent:* Monday, June 16, 2014 12:44 PM
>> *To:* [email protected]
>> *Subject:* [N8VEM-S100:4226] Re: A windows based program to write a CPM3 
>> image to a CF card for the S100 IDE board
>>
>>  
>>  
>> Hi David
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Looks like progress - Yes it should be a BANKED CPM image.  I will try 
>> again tonight with your debug CPMLDR - I have not been able to get as far 
>> as you have.  Is your LBA routine now with the -1 or not?.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> I will look at my files again and make sure they are setup for banked - 
>> though I had just re-downloaded John's file for banked version and changed 
>> to use serial I/O and added your writelba routine.  I did not check if all 
>> the variables were set right.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Dave
>>  
>>
>>
>> On Monday, June 16, 2014 2:18:47 PM UTC-5, David Fry wrote:
>>  
>> Hi Dave,
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> currently looking at your disk image, layout looks fine.
>>  
>> I have placed your image onto a CF card and over wrote your CPMLDR.COM 
>> with one of mine that logs the sectors read to the screen for 
>> troubleshooting.
>>  
>> I can see the directory is read as sector 40H and CPM3.SYS starts to load 
>> starting at sector 80H and loads 35 sectors in total matching the directory 
>> entry of 9 allocation units.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> I have a question, the screenshot below would seen to suggest that this 
>> image is a 'BANKED' cpm image, yet your HLDRBIOS.ASM has the Banked 
>> variable set to 'false', which is it ?
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> next question, have you added the LBA section in HIDE.ASM for CPM3.SYS 
>> and removed the offset correction ?
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> regards
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> David Fry
>> On Sunday, June 15, 2014 1:46:12 AM UTC+1, yoda wrote:
>>
>>  Hi David
>>  
>>  
>>
>> Had too many diskdefs and there was one in the directory where I was 
>> doing things with the wrong format.  The dummy.file I had created by dd 512 
>> bytes from a text file so that is why it was confusing so I made one with 
>> just e5 bytes in it.  I tried to remove the dec 1 instruction but still no 
>> working.  I still get a BDOS Err, Perm.  when it jumps to LBA 0x40.  Here 
>> is the new disk and HLDRBIOS.ASM - see if you can figure out what is wrong 
>> or how to load it.  If we can get this disk to load and work - it is really 
>> simple to make these and you can load whatever you want on them. 
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Dave
>>  
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 4:36:04 PM UTC-5, David Fry wrote: 
>>  
>> Dave,
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> had a quick look at the disk image you uploaded and noted a couple of 
>> things
>>  
>> 1) sector 0 seems to contain text notes with the start of CPMLDR.COM 
>> beginning at sector 1 as the first byte is 31H as you would expect.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> 2) the directory table entries seem to start at sector 61 ?? and not at 
>> sector 64 where we would expect track 1 to start.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> A couple of thoughts, if the position of CPMLDR.COM is correct then we 
>> can take out the -1 sector correction from the LBA routine and move all the 
>> sectors up one position leaving sector 0 blank, this will also have the 
>> effect of moving the directory table upto sector 40H where you expected to 
>> see it (and in hindsight I agree)
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> whats puzzling me at the moment is why is the directory table in sector 
>> 61 when you created the image with 64 sec/trk.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> does cpmtools support 64 sector/track ? is seems to have set the image to 
>> 61 sectors/track
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> regards
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> David Fry
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>
>> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 9:35:29 PM UTC+1, yoda wrote:
>>
>>  Sorry for previous  - web posted before I was ready 
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> The diskdefs are:
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> diskdef s100ide
>>  
>>      seclen 512
>>  
>>      tracks  256
>>  
>>      sectrck 64
>>  
>>      blocksize 2048
>>  
>>      skew    0
>>  
>>      boottrk 1
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> I think the problem is the -1 but I am not sure - Track 1 sector 1 should 
>> be 0x40 not 0x3F but I am not sure - tried commenting out the dec 1 but 
>> that did not seem to help either.  I have included my hldrbios.asm as well
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Dave
>>
>> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 2:13:22 PM UTC-5, David Fry wrote: 
>>  
>> Hi Dave,
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> thats right on a 64 sector border, this may be where my -1 or +1 sector 
>> correction may be wrong.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> regards
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> David Fry
>> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 8:00:09 PM UTC+1, yoda wrote:
>>
>>  Hi David 
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Sounds like a plan.  I have made one and when it boots with debug 
>> CPMLDR.COM reads LBA 3F and 40 then stops - that is where I am at.  Let 
>> me dig up an image and  I will post here for you to look - at - think it is 
>> pretty close
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Dave
>>  
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, June 14, 2014 1:48:33 PM UTC-5, David Fry wrote: 
>>  
>> 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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