The quick version : Does anyone know the exact physical and logical
disk format used by CP/M on the Philips P2000C portable computer?
The long version with explanations :
I am having reasonable success transfering files to/from disk images
for my Osborne 1A (using cpmtools) and IBM5155 (MS-DOS, of course
using editdisk). And I've even got the Greaseweazle to transfer those
images to/from real floppies. The Greaseweazle still annoys me in that
I know it's capable of a lot more if only I could work out how to do
it, but at least it does something useful
[The less said about floppy disks shedding oxide and/or suffering from
'sticky shed' the better. I'm spending far too much time dismantling
and cleaning drives....]
Any, I'd like to do the same for another of my machines, a Philips
P2000C cp/m 'portable'. My machine is the version with 2 internal 40
cylinder single head drives (about 160K each, MFM) but I can also plug
in an external 80 cylinder double head drive to handle this machine's
other native format (about 640K).
Unfortunately, this machine is not common, and neither cpmtools nor
the greaseweazle software has the formats predefined. I could add them
myself -- if I knew what they were. Things like #sectors/track, sector
size, #system tracks, skew, etc.
It's not obviously given in any of the manuals I have, so does anyone
know it before I try to work it out.
Alternatively there are rumours that the P2000C could read/write at
least one more common cp/m disk type. The hardware should be capable
of it, sure. Doe anyone know if software to do something like this
exists anywhere for the P2000C. I can't find it on any of the obvious
sites
-tony