10 Dec
2005
10 Dec
'05
11:11 p.m.
---------------Original Message-------------------
From: "Dave Dunfield" <dave04a at dunfield.com>
Subject: Re: Cromemco software available
<snip>
I've also got various Cromemco and third-party S/W
packages for the
Z80/68000/68010/68020 and Unix systems; will post a list one of these days.
However, I've been archiving them as MS format ZIP files instead of disk images;
that way it doesn't matter whether you've got 5" or 8" disks (also, I
only had some
of them on hard disks). Mind you, you would need a way to copy them back from
MS to CDOS/Cromix/Unix format and of course you'd still need a boot disk
for each O/S.
It would be nice to get this material archived, however it will be tough for most
people to make use of it. Would it be feasable to make up boot disks with the
utilities necessary to peform serial transfers, and provide ImageDisk images
of these which could be used to download the remaining software from the PC
into the target system?
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
-------------------Reply----------------
That's what I had in mind when I started to archive this stuff way back when,
at least for the OSs: one or more bootable disk images in both sizes and a
ZIP file of either a TAR file of the rest or individual files, depending on whether
links and attributes are required.
The problem I saw with just imaging is the 5" and 8" disks; for example, how
would someone install your 8" image of Cromix on his/her System One?
Also, I couldn't be bothered to install an 8" drive on the PC. Finally, at least
some of this stuff might also run on non-Cromemco systems so it might
be useful to have it in a form that is readable on the (more or less) universal
PC.
I was really just interested in archiving the stuff and not too concerned with
storing it in a directly installable form. This works for me, but I realize
it's not ideal.
Is there a better way of archiving this stuff?
Suppose you had a copy of Cromix+ on 8" disks, one bootable and three
others in FTAR format; how would you archive that in a way so that someone
with a System One and no 8" drive could install it, keeping the links and
attributes intact? Or you find an interesting package installed on your
System 3 HD ( If/when you get it working :); how do you archive that, again,
keeping links & attributes intact?
I'm using Cromix+ to copy & transfer stuff; it would indeed be useful to have
a comm program configured for a Cromemco running CDOS or Z80 Cromix
that can do xmodem or kermit; Since you'll shortly be getting copies of most
of this stuff anyway, I'll gladly leave it in your hands :)
mike