4 Jul
2018
4 Jul
'18
2:50 p.m.
I've got a Horizon so native console is no problem.
I originally got Dave Dunfield's NST working with my IMSAI and Dajen SCI
monitor board, on a North Star MDC single-density controller. I couldn't
get NST configured properly with the Dajen monitor (you're supposed to be
able to give it a format for poking bytes into memory), so I ended up
customizing Dave's RAMless 512 byte monitor for the SCI's serial port and
getting loaded up that way.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 12:35 PM, allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 07/04/2018 08:37 AM, systems_glitch via cctalk
wrote:
Yeah, you do need a monitor or something to get
started on either Mike
Douglas's solution or Dave Dunfield's NST. I've used both successfully.
If you have hard-sectored disks, I can just make you a boot disk. I have
both single and double density controllers.
Makes sure they are configured for the
NS* native IO. If they are not
your still
stuck as then the OS is looking for an IO board that is foreign.
I know that as before the horizon I had the bare NS* MDS in the Altair
using the SIO as serial.
Putting a boot monitor in is by far the easy way out. I did that early on
and it has serial transfer and embedded loader for soft sector controller.
I rarely use the stock NS* system but the older one with all the changes
is still in use. Hard disk (2x 31mb) makes it more useful.
There is one excuse I use occasionally for pulling out the stock NS,
UCSD Pascal. The first IDE.
Allison
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 12:39 AM, dwight via cctalk <
cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> I'm told that the N* controller can write H89 formated disk but the H89
> controller can't do N* format. I could have that backwards but that is
what
> I recall. One can't do the other.
>
> The H89 hard sectored controller is single density only, while the newer
> N* can do both single and double density, still hard sectored though.
There
> is always confusion on the N* controllers as
to which can do double
> density. My research indicates that the MDC-nA are single density only
and
> the MDC-nDA can do both ( n is a rev. number
1, 2, 3, or 4).
>
> Dwight
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Fred Cisin
via
> cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 3, 2018 11:08:18 AM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: Re: Looking for North star software
>
> On Tue, 3 Jul 2018, dwight via cctalk wrote:
>> I'm not as worried about 10 hard secrtored disk. I still have the punch
>> I had made for my H89. I can create 10 sector from old 360K disk.
> If you have a working H89 (hard sectored), then you should be able to
> write a program to run on the H89 to write hard sectored disk images!
> Can it do single density 256 byte sectors? or MFM 512 byte sectors?
>
> .ASM for PCTOFLOP should be available, as a guide to what you need, but
> will need modification for the H89 disk controller.
>
> Most of the NorthStar disk images should be availablem once you've got
the
> H89 writing disks from them!
>
> Once you've got the NorthStar booting CP/M plus a copy of PIP, you can
> then continue on it.
>
>
>