Ethan's Retrocomputing Corner - Kaypros and CP/M
classiccmp:
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 17:00:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Kaypro disk
On Sun, 16 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> I just happened to have opened up the machine an hour ago... the magic number
> is
>
> 81-232
That is what I need. I'll send the image by separate e-mail.
> Please also let me know what geometry the disks are. I haven't used a
> Kaypro since I was on an archeological dig in Greece in the mid-80's.
Unless someone has done some upgrading, they are single side double
density drives. The formatted capacity is 195k with ten (0-9) 512byte
sectors per track and 40 tracks. Like most all CP/M disks, the operating
system resides on the boot tracks - in this case, all of the first and the
latter part of the second. The directory occupies the first part of the
second track.
In the mid-80's, your Kaypro was just a baby :)
- don
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 17:56:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Kaypro disk
On Sun, 16 May 1999, Don Maslin wrote:
There is a comment on the e-mail I just sent you that says that "CTL ~" is
the means of exiting from Terminal mode. Wrong! It is CTL (the
hyphen/underline key). Sorry 'bought that.
- don
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 10:28:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Kaypro disk
On Mon, 17 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> I'm by no means certain that the image wrote correctly. I even went to the
> trouble of pulling the A drive out and using it on the PC to write the disk,
> just in case. Next step is to bulk erase the floppy, re-write it on a 486
> and go from there.
OK, if you continue to have problems I'll send you a different image to
try. Perhaps it will work better. You might want to peek in the drive
door and see if you can ascertain that the drives are in fact single
sided. My experience has been that DSDD Kaypros are often reluctant to
boot on SSDD disks. Doesn't altogether make sense, but...
> Do you know anything about Kaypro 2 enhancements (new ROMs I saw advertised,
> for example)?
Does the case say 2 or II? Kaypro made both, but the 2's were of the '84
configuration while the II's were '83. The only third party ROM that I
know of now available for the Kaypro is the Advent TurboROM. TCJ is
selling them, I believe. It is a good one! It is my understanding that
the II's with the 232 ROM are essentially 4's with SS drives. With the
drives replaced by DSDD and a DS version of the COPY.COM (format/sysgen)
program it will double your disk capacity, Ethan. Might be worth a try.
- don
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:09:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Kaypro manuals available
On Tue, 18 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> > There are three copies left, Ethan. How many do you want?
>
> Two.
You got 'em.
> Given all that, is it possible for something to be wrong enough in the
> hardware that it can load the BIOS, but that the BIOS can't bring up
> the monitor? What has to work in order to get a prompt that doesn't
> have to work to read track 0? I know the A drive works; it works flawlessly
> in the PC. I can format CP/M disks _and_ 180K DOS disks.
Sounds like there are no drive problems, and placing the image on disk
with the same drive you try to boot on certainly eliminates any possible
alignment problems.
Usually, when I have seen this 'hang' like you are experiencing it is a
result of the wrong version of the operating system. That is certainly
possible here! Which of the two images that I sent you shows the 2.2G?
That should not be! If any letter is displayed, it should be 'F'. It may
be that my image file is mislabeled, or I just grabbed the wrong one. 'G'
only works on the 292 ROM. Let me send you another one that I am more
sure of.
The CP/M that Cal Digital is selling is for the Xerox 1800 - a
quasi-laptop that never made any real splash in the market. They were
selling the hardware at one time also. Really, the only useful thing you
would be buying are the DRI manuals.
- don
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 12:36:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Kaypro manuals available
On Tue, 18 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> > It may be that my image file is mislabeled, or I just grabbed the wrong
> > one. 'G' only works on the 292 ROM.
>
> I can burn ROMs if needed.
See if you can find a motherboard number (they didn't always put them on)
as I am unsure whether there were hardware changes between the ROMs. I
think that the 292 was only applicable to the '84 boards which had pads
for a 50 pin header along the right edge just below the floppy header.
> > Let me send you another one that I am more sure of.
>
> Great.
Actually, I'll send two.
> If I have the Kaypro manuals from you, do you think that there is any
> benefit to these DRI manuals except for the logo?
Same information, but you get a nifty loose leaf binder with a slip
case :)
- don
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 17:20:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Kaypro manuals available
On Tue, 18 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Hmm... I wonder if it's possible to retrofit the connector, or if there
> are other changes to the design that make it not worth the effort. Are
> schematics available for various Kaypros?
I don't think so as there was additional circuitry associated with it. On
the 84's. the traces were there and adding sockets, chips, the header, and
a different ROM was required.
The tech manual had schematics split up into functional areas.
> Did the Kaypro 4 have a hard disk?
No, only the 10.
- don
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 21:52:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Maslin <donm@cts.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Kaypro manuals available
On Tue, 18 May 1999, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> The machine is open and the MB is PC81-240A. There is a row of 2x6 pads
> by the power connector. There is an unpopulated socket at U75 (by the
> WD8116 and 5.0688Mhz xtal).
OK, that is the appropriate board for the '83 II or 4. I have no clue as
to what U75 might be for. It is not identified in the parts list.
> Both of the most recent disk images worked. Many thanks. I noticed that
> one had more stuff on it, but the other had the term program. ADM-3A!?! Oy!
Thank gawd! The 149 disk is from the earliest of the Kaypro II's. Don't
throw away the stuff on the other disks. Particularly, the COPYDS program
on the last one. That is what you need if you get DS drives.
> Now I'm off to burn some more floppies. I have a .DSK image of Hitchhiker's
> Guide. I think it came from a British CP/M machine. Will 22DISK or Teledisk
> work with an uncompressed disk image that has no particular header info?
No, neither will know what to do with it. That calls for some other
witchcraft, and I have forgotten its name. Need to dig that up!
- don
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 15:08:45 -0700
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis@mcmanis.com<
Subject: Bootstrapping CPM
At 02:25 PM 5/27/99 -0700, Dwight wrote:
> ... The controller automatically loads track 0 sector 1.
Presumably the controller accomplishes this with and EPROM of some sort :-)
Some controllers like the 16FDC have a monitor in ROM that is standalone.
Anyway, you needn't worry because you are almost there.
> I start executing at address zero and it boot loads the
> CPM system.
When you say "I" here, do you mean the controller or your code?
The core of a disk loader is very simple (note i've lost how many sectors
the standard 8" 3740 format disk had on it (it was twenty something) I'm
using 'n' as a place holder)
Set track to 0
read track
copy sectors 1 - n to 0xE000
set track to 1
read track
copy sectors 0 - n to the next block of memory past
(0xE000+(n-1)*128)
jump to 0xE000
That was it! The system was booted.
Now there are some variables, if your bios was larger then the space
allocated by default you could "move" CPM (MOVCPM) to start on a different
address other than E000, this would affect your transient program area
(TPA) available for programs (and note that Turbo PASCAL programs couldn't
run if they had been compiled on a system with a larger TPA!)
Also some BIOSes (like mine) coded the disk geometry into the boot block so
that a single boot program would boot multiple disk types. I had an 8 bit
value that encoded drive size, # of sides, dd/sd, and "pertec" style
seeking. Other BIOSes actually wrote different boot blocks depending on the
disk they were written on.
--Chuck
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 16:27:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: allisonp@world.std.com
Subject: RE: Re[2]: Bringing up a CPM
> According to my DR "CP/M 2 Alteration Guide", track 0 sector 1
> is the cold start loader (bootstrap). Track 0 Sectors 2-17 are the CCP.
> Track 0 Sectors 18-26 and Track 1 Sectors 1-19 are the BDOS. And
> Track 1 Sectors 20-26 are the BIOS. This is for a plain-vanilla
> 8" SSSD installation, of course.
What the manual doesn't say (besides a lot) is that the boot was specific
to the MDS800 implmentation and is optional! Afterall if you can read the
disk why read a boot unless the original rom boot was to read ISIS OS!
If your rom(eprom) can read the read teh boot device it can also load cpm
and do the coldboot work. That makes both the boot sector and parts of
coldboot routine optional.
For example one of my systems has CPM (CCP and BDOS) in Rom and the boot
rom copies the bios to the right address then ccp and BDOS below it and
jumps to the warm boot address as the cold boot is already done by then.
There doesn't have to be anything more than a formatted black floppy in
the drive (CCP logs the current drive, so something has to be there).
That's an example of what the book doesn't tell you.
Allison
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 16:37:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: allisonp@world.std.com
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Bringing up a CPM
> I guess the issue is that the additional space is the BIOS and
> since I'll be replacing this with my own BIOS, and I write efficient
> code, I don't have to worry about it until I run out of space?
>
> Dwight
???HUH??? Figure this if your running a SSSD 8" to be compatable with
media out there the system has two tracks to use for the CCP, BDOS and
bios. Thats 52 sectors!
The first sector DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THE BOOT.
The FIRST 1600h bytes are ccpand bdos (44 sectors).
The bios can be up to 8 sectors in length but the buffers can be placed
on the end so they dont have to be stored in the disk (uninitialized ram).
In fact the system can be in rom and copied to ram and mapped out.
The disk if your going to read SSSD disks must use the skew of 6, 2
tracks reserved with 63 directoriy entries (may be different, from
memory).
Allison
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 14:21:41 -0600 (MDT)
From: Roger Ivie <IVIE@cc.usu.edu>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: CP/M 86
> So I was wondering if anyone had a copy of it or knew where I could get a
> copy
> of CP/M-86 for the IBM PC..
http://cpm.interfun.net
Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu
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