20 Nov
2005
20 Nov
'05
3:37 a.m.
Well, I shall try it, of course. I'm trying to
compose one boot disk for my
(actually orpahn of software) Xerox 820 in 5,25 inch.format. I have the
files and even (I think) the CPM.SYS file what must be copied in the first
tracks of the CP/M disk in single density format. But I have the impression
that all the tools available actually musn't do the job I want to do. I only
know one tool in CP/M to grab the boot tracks, and I suppose that if I use
one computer to do the job (one Osborne Vixen) and compose with it one boot
disk for the Xerox 820 it will not work in the Xerox cause of the different
treatment of the disks from the Vixen to the Xerox. Isn't so ?
Not sure exactly what you are trying to do, however I gather that you have a
binary image of a boot track that you wish to use to replace the boot tracks
of an existing disk.
If you have these on two different disks, you can merge them with ImageDisk,
You can either read images containing only the tracks you want from each,
or you can use IMDU to extract only those tracks from full images. Then you
can either write the two sub-images to the disk separately (ImageDisk will
only format/write tracks occuring an image), or you can use IMDU to merge
them into a single complete image, which you can then write to the disk.
If your boot track is not already on a disk (Ie: you just have a binary track
image in a file), then you can either:
- Use ImageDisk to read the disk you want to patch
- Use IMDU to record the details of the disk format which is recorded
in the .IMD image file.
- Use IMDU to convert the .IMD image into a raw binary sector dump.
(This removes the formatting information and leaves you with just the
data from the disk sectors).
- Patch you new binary data into the resulting file using whatever means
you would normally use to patch binary files.
- Use BIN2IMD and the formatting details noted earlier to convert the
binary dump back into a ImageDisk .IMD file
- Use ImageDisk to write the image to a disk.
- or -
- Use BIN2IMD to convert your boot track image into a small .IMD.
(You will need to know the correct disk format - you should be able
to determine this by looking at an image of the target disk)
- Use IMDU to merge an image of the other disk - this will add all of
the tracks not occuring in your boot image.
- Use IMD to write the new image to a disk.
Someone out there must already X820 bootdisks in 5.25" format.
If so, could you make ImageDisk images and send them to be for
inclusion in the archive. I have X820 disks in 8" format, however
I don't have 5.25".
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html