21 Dec
2011
21 Dec
'11
7:17 p.m.
On 12/21/2011 01:31 PM, Damien Cymbal wrote:
Looks at sector first sector on the drive is it has the next stage boot
it loads that
or fails to floppy.
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:53:12 -0500
From: "B. Degnan"<billdeg at degnanco.com>
To:<cctech at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Visual 1050 hard drive setup
Thanks for the initial responses Allison and Bill.
Here's a summary of what I have been able to cull together so far:
(1) The Z80 BOOT PROM code (version 1.2 at least, which is the source listing
I have) appears to probe the Winchester, for boot e.g.
- try to read Winchester
- check result
- if error, try floppy
- if OK, check Winchester label
- if bad label, try floppy
- if good label load system and boot??? (this part is unclear to me)
On 12/19/2011 05:30 PM, Damien Cymbal wrote:
That's correct. There is a special disk to set up the hard drive. I think
you
have to have this disk in drive A in order to read the hard drive, I don't think
one can simply boot a 1050 to harddrive. I plan to work on this system over
the next few months, I will document the process on my site when I do. I
also am knee-deep in projects at the moment.
Bill Does anybody have a Visual 1050 with hard drive
setup? I am looking
for any doc/pointers on how to get a hard drive configured under
CP/M for this system.
I do have two of them with HD, haven't powered it for a little while so
memory is fuzzy.
As I remember it used a different copy of the bios (boot disk) to configure
as the bios had to be aware of the hard drive. I can look at docs but
powering it up would take weeks to get to as other projects are in the
forefront.
(2) Not all of the v1050 CP/M BIOS versions appear to
support the Winchester.
Versions up to 1.1 do not appear to contain the WINCH.ASM module which I
am assuming is required for support. I do not have access to version 1.2, but
I see this module showing up starting in version 1.3.
I would assume that with the 1.2 BOOT PROM and the 1.4 CP/M BIOS I could
support the Winchester (barring any bugginess - Bill I believe you have v2.0
of the CP/M BIOS and not sure on the BOOT PROM).
What isn't clear to me at this point is how to install CP/M onto the Winchester
and get the label setup so that the PROM would boot directly from the hard drive
I have a deep set of docs for it and I'll look. May take a bit.
Also winchester is a SASI to Adaptec or Xybec SASI/SCSI controller to
MFM drive.
Supporting software includes formatter, partition tool and installer.
I forget if the installer was a variant of movcpm or sysgen.
I have full software for mine but I'd have to dig it out as well.
Allison