19 Oct
2024
19 Oct
'24
5:43 p.m.
Great to see my old PC5000 receiving so much loving attention; thanks Steve!
FWIW, related to the discussion elsewhere about BBSs, that PC5000 was
originally owned by Canada Remote Systems, a smaller Canadian version of
Compuserve based here in Toronto, It was a fairly large (by Canadian
standards) commercial BBS system of the 80s and 90s, noted primarily for
its extensive file collection; I think I still have some of their
collection disks on 8" media somewhere.
On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 10:05 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Some interesting things (on PC-5000):
- I copied over QMATH, and old command line "parsing-calculator" I did in
Turbo Pascal decades ago (probably about 1992, so post MSDOS5 at least),
and it runs on the PC-5000! It's packaged in my "VUC" tools here (along
with CDIR) voidstar78/VUC4DOS: voidstar Utility Collection for (MS/DR/PC)
DOS (github.com) <https://github.com/voidstar78/VUC4DOS>
That just speaks well to the PC-5000 really being MS-DOS compatible (and
that it ran an executable from a much later generation of MS-DOS). Note
that CDIR itself doesn't run on that MS-DOS 2.00 system (I suspect anything
that "touches color" won't run, based on trying to run a few other
similar
type things)
- VER is saying MS-DOS 2.00, same as the startup/bootup note. Though it
does say the "Command v2.02" shortly after (I suspect as it is loading the
command.com, or in any case just prior to invoking autoexec.bat)
- I don't have a "native" DEBUG.COM for 2.X yet (and ended up in a bad
time
that archive.org is majorly down again). And trying to run DEBUG.COM from
3.30 disks on the PC-5000 just says "Incorrect DOS version" (was we've
discussed, which as mentioned I'll have to debug the debug.com on another
system first to patch it)
I'll dig into the .COM patching later, have some errands this weekend
first. Plus, it turns out I "blew up" my parallel port *again*. Modern
day, we take it for granted about USB being hot-swappable. Well,
parallel-ports apparently aren't that forgiving - and I keep forgetting
that. I've zapped two parallel cards now while swapping between parallel
devices. (which I'm making good progress figuring out the "retro
printer"
that will emulator old printers and let us print from old software and go
straight to a PDF, but still working on it) The LPT devices themselves
are fine, just I really heard the electrical pop and just the parallel port
is absolutely dead (everything else seems fine though)
More to report later, but was excited that "something from the future"
(qmath.exe built almost a decade after the PC-5000 was sold) worked.
-SteveL
On Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 6:35 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
just
stored
On Thu, 17 Oct 2024, Steve Lewis wrote:
tomorrow.
I follow all that (on the DEBUG.COM notes) and
appreciate the notes -
that
> will save some time, I look forward to trying a few things out
I forgot to do VER explicitly, but on boot up it is saying MS-DOS 2.00.
And just now, I recalled that on github there is MS-DOS source (and
bins) -
I think Dave's Garage, he recently did a
video on building and booting
MS-DOS 4.0 from that source. Maybe I should use this as an excuse to
try
> a 2.0 build? Or least, reading through the FORMAT.ASM, I see all the
> DOSVER checking stuff - helps confirm patch addresses, or maybe try
recompiling that one utility without this check.
Reading through the CONFIG.txt in the MS-DOS 2.0 github repo, it's
interesting near the end: (the use of forward slash instead of
backslash,
ha! and just above this, the comments mention
/dev/<dev>)
"A typical configuration file might look like this:
BUFFERS = 10
FILES = 10
DEVICE = /bin/network.sys
BREAK = ON
SWITCHAR = -
SHELL = a:/bin/command.com a:/bin -p"
GOOD
So, you should be able to patch FORMAT 2.11 ti work on the DOS version
that is running.
BUT, whether Format /S or SYS will work remains to be seen.
I have seen cases where the opening banner does not quite match the
version number, such as 4.01 V 4.00
and a conditional jmp needs an exact match.
So, definitely run VER
and/or
in debug A(Assemble)
MOV AH,30
INT 21
INT 3 ; ends program and displays registers
and see what it shows in AX
(running that in CMD of my Windows 7 gives 0005 (5.00)!)
One of the early homework assignments when I taught PC Assembly was to go
into DEBUG and patch LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE to eliminate DOD version
checking.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com