Resending
Part 2
BTW, for the parameters for DRIVER.SYS, you can abbreviate the /t:80 /s:9 to
"/F:2" (and later, "/F:720")
/0 was "360K"
/1 was "1.2M"
/2 was "720K"
anybody remember the numbers for 8"?
/d:2 meant you wanted the logical drive to use the third physical drive, /d:3
meant you wanted the logical drive to use the fourth physical drive, /d:1
meant you wanted the logical drive to use the second physical drive, /d:0
meant you wanted the logical drive to use the firs physical drive, which you
could do if you used a "360K" format on the disk in the "720K" drive in A:
during booting.
Machines that had "CMOS Setup" that supported 3.5" disk drives would let you
use a 3.5" drive as A:
And 5.25" "Quad" drives (NON-HD 96tpi, such as Tandon TM100-4, Teac 55F, or
Shugart/matsushits 465) was generally indistinguishable to the PC from a 3.5"
"720K".
TRIVIAL nits on the webpage (URL that you posted):
TRS80 Model II was 8" drives. (model 1 and 3 were 5.25") Although I have
heard of somebody kludging "1.2M" drives on one, I haven't seen it.
The picture identifying locations shows the FDC on the motherboard. It was on
the FDC board, and "power connectors" is pointing at the drive
internal data connectors; the power connectors are not visible in the picture,
because they are underneath.
"Ive heard stories that the 37-pin external adapter can be used to read/write
older 8 disk drives, but I never saw this in person. 8 disk drives were a bit
before my time."
modifications are needed to the FDC board to do so.
Flagstaff Engineering did so, and sold a modified FDC plus 8" drive.
The configuration switches on the motherboard of 5150 and 5160 can be set for
up to four drives, and those should be discussed?
Yes, as mentioned, with extra floppy drives, demented INSTALL programs, such
as MS-DOS 6.00, will insist on trying to install to your third floppy.
SUGGESTION: a cheap vise works adequately for crimping flat IDC cables; I've
even done them with a block of wood and a hammer, and with vise-grips.
NOTE: when I say "720K", "360K", "1.2M", I am using those as NAMES for those
disks, formats, and drives, not as necessarily the capacity. I am well aware
that those names don't acknowledge that the "720K" drive is capable of other
formats, ranging from 640K to 800K, (or even more with short gaps, mixed
sector sizes, and/or other tricks). But, I have yet to see, other than
listing sample model numbers, names for the drive that are simple, and less
ambiguous.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
I sent this before, but it didn't show up on the list;
Part 1;
>>> Which versions of DOS let you boot off B: ?
Obviously, NO command that you run in DOS (which would be after it has
booted), will change the boot sequence, which is before DOS is present.
Nor will such a change last through a boot (although MICROS~1 could have
included a tepid/partial boot, if they had wanted to.)
DRIVER.SYS achieved prominence in DOS 3.20. PC-DOS 3.20 was the first time
that IBM supported a 3.5" ("720K") drive. Several other companies, other than
IBM, already used 3.5" drives for laptops, such as Data General, Gavilan, etc.
with their own drivers in MS-DOS, particularly version 2.11, which was similar
to 2.10, but used by OEMs that needed to customize MS- DOS. In many cases,
the 3.5" disk formats that those companies created were different from what is
supported in DOS 3.20 http://www.xenosoft.com/fmts.html
IBM PC/JX was an IBM machine with 5.25" "720K" drives, but was never sold in
USA.
Because IBM's 5170, and most already existing 286 machines, did not include
"720K" as any of the options in the "CMOS Setup" for identifying what kind of
drive each physical drive was, DRIVER.SYS permitted creating a
logical/virtual/shadow drive that would share a physical drive, as E:, F:,
etc.
LASTDRIVE was also needed if you already had more than two floppy drives and a
HDD, to permit assigning drive letters past D:
Another alternative was DRIVPARM ! It was a CONFIG.SYS command to alter the
parameters of floppy drives, WITHOUT creating any new logical drives or drive
letters! DOS 3.20 and onwards.
Something that has always confused me:
DRIVPARM is documented in MS-DOS 3.20, but is not mentioned in the PC-DOS 3.20
documantation.
I used MS-DOS with DRIVPARM on a generic 286 machine, and it worked!
I used PC-DOS with DRIVPARM on a generic 286 machine, and it worked!
I used MS-DOS with DRIVPARM on a genuine 5170, and it failed, with a "BAD
CONFIG.SYS COMMAND" message (possibly mistaken on the exact wording)
I used PC-DOS with DRIVPARM on a genuine 5170, and it failed, with a "BAD
CONFIG.SYS COMMAND" message (possibly mistaken on the exact wording)
I used MS-DOS with DRIVPARM on a generic 286, with copy of the 5170 BIOS, and
it failed, with a "BAD CONFIG.SYS COMMAND" message (possibly mistaken on the
exact wording)
I used PC-DOS with DRIVPARM on a generic 286, with copy of the 5170 BIOS, and
it failed, with a "BAD CONFIG.SYS COMMAND" message (possibly mistaken on the
exact wording)
So, therefore, I concluded that DRIVPARM was incompatible with the IBM 5170
BIOS. But present in both MS-DOS 3.20 and PC-DOS 3.20, although it is
UNDOCUMENTED in PC-DOS.
Chuck has mentioned that if you insert 3 Ctrl-A characters, it will work
on most;
DRIVPARM ^A^A^A B: /F:2
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
So I'm working on restoring a Compaq DeskPro/XE system to allow me to
use the 5.25 floppy to copy files from my 3.5 floppies which will come
from my Windows 10 system so that I can extract on the Deskpro/XE using
teledisk the .td0 files that make up a RX50 floppy disk set so I can
load POS 3.2 on my Pro/380 and see if the DECNA card works.
What a pain in the rear.
So far the XE boots but has no setup. Setup requires a special floppy
(Diagnostic disk) which mine was bad after 30 years so I'm trying to
create a new one. I have the official Compaq disk creation thing for a
floppy but it's in QRST format and the QRST under DOSBOX on Windows10
can't properly access a floppy even if "mounted" with a -t floppy extension.
Before I drag out my rusty and trusty Windows 95 Toshiba 660AV laptop,
is there another way to get this onto a floppy? I have an endless supply
of Rpi's, and doing a DD from a .img file works fine but this of course
is a QRST file.
Thoughts?
CZ
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:27:52 +0000
From: silcreval <silvercreekvalley(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-8/A FPP8/A
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <4EF3AB13-972C-4EE0-8105-C11128DA4BFA(a)yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>Hi Bob
>Thanks - thats very interesting. I guess there was quite a >bit of overlap with the 11 and the 8/A so 'marketing' >stepped in :-)
Exactly what happened, you are correct. We did want to sell more 8 systems into labs... where small memory models made sense (256K words or less) and kept having this dream of a Fortran Machine that went fast for the times.
I don't recall exactly but I think one of the 11 models with FPU that got blown out of the water was the 11/60 (a harvard arch implementation by O'Loughlin iirc) that was a decent and very very reliable 11 (used pairs of them for a critical system and they were exceptionally reliable when compared with disk drives!!)
The 8A was (and still is) a good machine but some of us wanted to build a 10Mhz clock 8 but the cost would have put it in the wrong price range for the types of customers we were allowed to have.
bb
> Izzat a "SPARCBook II"? If so, I have one with 2 drives, and
> the /usr drive is failing. I can replace that but I have no
> idea how to reinstall SunOS/Solaris/Whatever.
I did that in the past using a network install. One will need
ftfp (for kernel) and bootp (for parameters and paths) as well
as old style nfs on a server with the installation media. Worked
nicely and is pretty fast if CDs are copied to harddrive before-
hand...
Best wishes and good luck,
Erik.
''~``
( o o )
+--------------------------.oooO--(_)--Oooo.-------------------------+
| Dr. Erik Baigar Inertial Navigation & |
| Salzstrasse 1 .oooO Vintage Computer |
| D87616 Marktoberdorf ( ) Oooo. Hobbyist / Physicist |
| erik(a)baigar.de +------\ (----( )---------------------------+
| www.baigar.de | \_) ) /
+----------------------+ (_/
Well, the weekend of hardware sudden death continues. The reason for getting
the UltraBook IIi out was to do some more work on kOpenRay, the free Sun Ray
server software I very occasionally maintain. Among other devices I use(d) two
Accutech Gobi laptops to talk to it since they have an oddball VPN setup that
used to cause problems.
Unfortunately, neither will configure their network interfaces anymore and just
hang. The board is of course a cheap mass of unrepairable components.
If anyone has an Accutech Gobi (either the 7 or 8 model, both will suffice, I
don't need the 3.5G module but will use it if it's there) sitting around
gathering dust, I'd love to buy it off you. I have the power supply and
batteries already. Southern California.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- And now for something completely different. -- Monty Python ----------------
I’ve been restoring a RM380 I picked up not long ago and it’s been good news and bad news. All the cards are in wonderful condition and the case is presentable however the two BASF 6106 floppy drives are highly corroded and probably won’t work again but this isn’t what I’m wondering, the original supply is a little rough but looks tone perfectly restorable with the exception of the key lock been stuck (problem to solve later) and I can get all the parts needed to replace the three filters but it is a 70s linear supply and if my s-100 experience has told me anything they might not be the most reliable. What would you all recommend restoring it and keeping it original or fitting some modern SMPS in its place. It is a low serial number as well (691) but saying I want it to be reliable I’m torn.
Don White designed the FPP8/A. From my recollection, the unit that
was sold with 8/A was the second iteration of an Omnibus FPP8. I waa
off in LCG working on Jupiter so I never got to see the original but I
recall that the redesign to use the cycle stealing version that went
to market was because the original 8/A version was too "powerful"
meaning that it out performed all of the PDP-11 FPP units and was more
precise. I recall it was capable of 72 bit vice 36 bit max operations.
The marketed design was a cost reduced and really an extraordinary
simple design, elegant would be a better description. I seem to recall
the original was built around either ALU or 4 bit Slice chips like
AMD2901 or some variation of a TRW chip.
bob
