3 Mar
2014
3 Mar
'14
7:59 a.m.
Can anyone tell me how to write a .DSK (JV3) image of Super Utility 4 for
TRS-80 Model IV to a real diskette?
The image boots in my xtrs80 emulator, but it cannot copy itself. If I
boot either TRSDOS 1.3 or LDOS 6, they do not recognize the image file as
a valid disk.
Sort of a Catch-22, yet I understand it is possible.
Terry (Tez) appears to have done so based on his web site writeup, but
it's unclear how the techniques mentioned (ImageDisk) apply to a
non-standard JV3 image.
I have the feeling the solution is obvious, for some definition of
"obvious", but I'm not seeing it.
Steve
--
3 Mar
3 Mar
2:58 p.m.
Hi Steve,
It's been a while and I can't remember the details of each individual
program but I THINK I just used the Keil emulator and Copycat.4.1 as
mentioned on the website. Once copycat was loaded it asked for a source and
destination disk. Using SU4 image as the source disk it just copied it out
to a floppy.
That's how I remember it anyway, but it was about 4 years ago and the
recollections a little foggy.
Tez
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:59 AM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
Can anyone tell me how to write a .DSK (JV3) image of
Super Utility 4 for
TRS-80 Model IV to a real diskette?
The image boots in my xtrs80 emulator, but it cannot copy itself. If I
boot either TRSDOS 1.3 or LDOS 6, they do not recognize the image file as a
valid disk.
Sort of a Catch-22, yet I understand it is possible.
Terry (Tez) appears to have done so based on his web site writeup, but
it's unclear how the techniques mentioned (ImageDisk) apply to a
non-standard JV3 image.
I have the feeling the solution is obvious, for some definition of
"obvious", but I'm not seeing it.
Steve
--
9:20 p.m.
On Tue, 4 Mar 2014, Terry Stewart wrote:
It's been a while and I can't remember the
details of each individual
program but I THINK I just used the Keil emulator and Copycat.4.1 as
mentioned on the website. Once copycat was loaded it asked for a source and
destination disk. Using SU4 image as the source disk it just copied it out
to a floppy.
It will take me a while to put the hardware together for that. My
diskette RW system uses a Compaticard IV, which appears as a secondary
controller. I doubt the Keil emulator will be able to talk to it, so I
need to get in the box and rearrange cables.
In the interim, I tried CopyCat on xtrs (Linux). It reads the SU4 image
without a problem, but hangs trying to write to the floppy.
Next up, I took a DMK image of SuperUtility (older version) and tried to
convert it to IMD format. DMK2IMD refuses, telling me that the PC
diskette controller is incapable of mixing sector sizes on the same track.
I can probably write it using my Catweasel, but that's also an adventure
to setup. Probably have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, do you
know where I can find a dmk image of SU4? Tim Mann's jv2dmk utility
refuses to convert it, telling me the track is too long.
This looks to be quite a pitched battle! The way su4 was mentioned in the
docs for the FreHD, I had the impression this was a very common tool - not
so much it seems.
Steve
--
4 Mar
4 Mar
3:15 a.m.
In the meantime, do you know where I can find a dmk
image of SU4? Tim
Mann's jv2dmk utility refuses to convert it, telling me the track is too
long.
I think I can help Steve. I'll send you a message off list.
Tez
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 4 Mar 2014, Terry Stewart wrote:
It's been a while and I can't remember the details of each individual
program but I THINK I just used the Keil emulator
and Copycat.4.1 as
mentioned on the website. Once copycat was loaded it asked for a source
and
destination disk. Using SU4 image as the source disk it just copied it
out
to a floppy.
It will take me a while to put the hardware together for that. My
diskette RW system uses a Compaticard IV, which appears as a secondary
controller. I doubt the Keil emulator will be able to talk to it, so I
need to get in the box and rearrange cables.
In the interim, I tried CopyCat on xtrs (Linux). It reads the SU4 image
without a problem, but hangs trying to write to the floppy.
Next up, I took a DMK image of SuperUtility (older version) and tried to
convert it to IMD format. DMK2IMD refuses, telling me that the PC diskette
controller is incapable of mixing sector sizes on the same track.
I can probably write it using my Catweasel, but that's also an adventure
to setup. Probably have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, do you
know where I can find a dmk image of SU4? Tim Mann's jv2dmk utility
refuses to convert it, telling me the track is too long.
This looks to be quite a pitched battle! The way su4 was mentioned in the
docs for the FreHD, I had the impression this was a very common tool - not
so much it seems.
Steve
--
12:24 p.m.
On Mon, 3 Mar 2014, Steven Hirsch wrote:
On Tue, 4 Mar 2014, Terry Stewart wrote:
Whew... Finally nailed it by working backwards on the decision tree from
the goal: A working diskette.
My choices for writing it were (in increasing order of pain):
- Physical device mapped into xtrs80 under Linux.
- Imagedisk on my duplicating machine
- Physical device mapped into Keil emulator under MSDOS
- Catweasel on a second shop machine.
Under xtrs80, I tried booting a CopyCat JV3 image and using it to copy a
JV3 image of SU4 to a physical diskette. No luck. It would start the
target drive and hang on Track 0.
Next up: ImageDisk. IMD has a utility that will convert a DMK image to
IMD for write to media. I had only a JV3 (DSK) image. Tried using one of
Tim Mann's tools to convert JV3 --> DMK. It failed with an error message
about the track being too long. Went back to the web and found a DMK of
an older version of SU. Tried running DMK2IMD on that, but it failed with
a message that the PC diskette controller was not capable of writing mixed
sector sizes on the same track.
On that basis, I skipped the Keil emulator since it would be trying to use
a PC diskette controller - and would require disassembly of the system to
get the 5.25" drive on the primary controller (normally attached to the
Compaticard IV secondary which isn't recognized by Keil).
Down to the Catweasel.
(Tez was kind enough to send me an SU.DMK, but it was unfortunately for a
DS diskette and my Mod 4 is not so equipped.)
Tim Mann's CW suite has 'dmk2cw', but SU4 was a JV3 (as mentioned) and
couldn't be converted with his tools. Finally the light went on. I
created a blank DMK disk image for xtrs, mounted it as drive 2, mounted
the SU4 JV3 image as drive 1 and booted CopyCat on drive 0. Told it to
make copy of 1 --> 2. Yay! It worked! An SU4.DMK file. Fired up the CW
box, crossed my fingers and ran 'dmk2cw'. Tick, tick, tick... Bingo.
All tracks written.
Cross fingers, carry diskette into the shop where the Mod 4 was sitting,
reset same. It came up to the SU4 opening menu and seems to work fine.
Hopefully this will be of help to anyone else stuck in the same situation.
What a saga....
What really confuses me is that Tez mentions being able to do this on the
Kiel emulator running on an older 486 PC. So the question is: Was DMK2IMD
wrong in stating that it wasn't possible?
Steve
--
It's been a while and I can't remember
the details of each individual
program but I THINK I just used the Keil emulator and Copycat.4.1 as
mentioned on the website. Once copycat was loaded it asked for a source and
destination disk. Using SU4 image as the source disk it just copied it out
to a floppy.
It will take me a while to put the hardware together for that. My diskette
RW system uses a Compaticard IV, which appears as a secondary controller. I
doubt the Keil emulator will be able to talk to it, so I need to get in the
box and rearrange cables.
In the interim, I tried CopyCat on xtrs (Linux). It reads the SU4 image
without a problem, but hangs trying to write to the floppy.
Next up, I took a DMK image of SuperUtility (older version) and tried to
convert it to IMD format. DMK2IMD refuses, telling me that the PC diskette
controller is incapable of mixing sector sizes on the same track.
I can probably write it using my Catweasel, but that's also an adventure to
setup. Probably have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, do you know
where I can find a dmk image of SU4? Tim Mann's jv2dmk utility refuses to
convert it, telling me the track is too long.
This looks to be quite a pitched battle! The way su4 was mentioned in the
docs for the FreHD, I had the impression this was a very common tool - not so
much it seems.
4:02 p.m.
(Tez was kind enough to send me an SU.DMK, but it was
unfortunately for a
DS diskette and my Mod 4 is not so equipped.)
Steve,
Are you sure you're not mistaken here? I'm positive that DMK image I sent
you is single sided. Matthew Reed's TRSTools tells me the disk is DMK and
the size is 180k, which would indicate a single sided double density 40
track disk? Also, my own machine has single sided drives and I'm sure this
is the image I used to make a real disk. Thirdly, CopyCat is for single
sided disks and this is what I used for the copying.
I remember more clearly how I made a real SU4 disk now. I used that image
I sent you, which as you would have noticed is not a self-booting disk, but
rather contains SU4 as a file.
I booted the Keil emulator with a CopyCat disk image I have. It's version
4.1 and says on the splash page it copies single sided diskettes (and I'm
assuming only single-sided diskettes). I then linked the SU4 DMK image to
drive 0 and put a real disk in drive 1 (which was mapped to a physical
drive). Pressed enter and the disk was copied.
I then could use this disk on the Model 4 by booting in a Model 4 DOS (e.g.
TRSDOS 6.1), inserting the SU4 disk in drive 1 and calling up the file.
My Model 4 is packed away so I just tried this procedure with Matthew
Reed's TRS32 emulator. Although it created another SU4 disk image rather
than a physical disk, everything worked as above.
I'm wondering if your issues might be related to the Linux-based software.
I'm not familiar with those TRS-80 emulators or tools at all.
Cheers
Terry (Tez)
P.S. if anyone else following this wants to see/check the SU image I have
in order to assist Steve with his puzzle it's here (for now)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5399598/temp/SU4.dsk
8:53 p.m.
On Wed, 5 Mar 2014, Terry Stewart wrote:
(Tez was kind
enough to send me an SU.DMK, but it was unfortunately for a
DS diskette and my Mod
4 is not so equipped.) Steve,
Are you sure you're not mistaken here? I'm positive that DMK image I sent
you is single sided. Matthew Reed's TRSTools tells me the disk is DMK and
the size is 180k, which would indicate a single sided double density 40
track disk? Also, my own machine has single sided drives and I'm sure this
is the image I used to make a real disk. Thirdly, CopyCat is for single
sided disks and this is what I used for the copying.
Oh, it's certainly possible. All I can tell you for sure is that Tim
Mann's dmk2cw tool insists on writing a double-sided diskette from it and
it's about 2x the size of the dmk image I ended up making. I did not poke
at it with any other utilities.
I remember more clearly how I made a real SU4 disk
now. I used that image
I sent you, which as you would have noticed is not a self-booting disk, but
rather contains SU4 as a file.
I will pick up that thread again, but...
Unfortunately, my Model 4 dropped dead rather uncerimoniously in the
middle of the afternoon today. So I need to get sidetracked fixing it.
Symptoms are strange. When you switch it on, the screen fills completely
with garbage - looks almost like every character in the ROM being dumped
end to end. Drive 0 keep spinning, but does not get selected. Keyboard
is ignored. Not sure what this is about.
I booted the Keil emulator with a CopyCat disk image
I have. It's version
4.1 and says on the splash page it copies single sided diskettes (and I'm
assuming only single-sided diskettes). I then linked the SU4 DMK image to
drive 0 and put a real disk in drive 1 (which was mapped to a physical
drive). Pressed enter and the disk was copied.
I then could use this disk on the Model 4 by booting in a Model 4 DOS (e.g.
TRSDOS 6.1), inserting the SU4 disk in drive 1 and calling up the file.
My Model 4 is packed away so I just tried this procedure with Matthew
Reed's TRS32 emulator. Although it created another SU4 disk image rather
than a physical disk, everything worked as above.
We are maybe comparing Apples to Oranges. If I'm following you correctly,
you have an executable file on a conventional TRS-80 diskette and you're
not having to deal with the oddball formatting of the original SU4
diskette. This is likely why you had no trouble making a physical copy.
The image I was playing with is a JV3 of the original SU diskette (mixed
sector sizes within a track!) and I seriously doubt that any PC can write
one. To the Catweasel it's just a bunch of flux transitions, so no
problem there.
I'm wondering if your issues might be related to
the Linux-based software.
I'm not familiar with those TRS-80 emulators or tools at all.
Well, this is all new to me. Amigas, Cocos and Apple 2s I'm
very familiar with. TRS-80s are uncharted territory at the moment.
Thanks again for the kind help and advice!
Steve
--
10 Mar
10 Mar
10:50 a.m.
Re: unceremonious death/screen full of random characters
You might check the processor (non Tandy guess) although I'm not sure what the random
screens look like before the processor initializes the screen will have seemingly random
data until it clears the ram and loads the rom.
Sent from my iPhone /////c
10:05 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, Sam Onella wrote:
Re: unceremonious death/screen full of random
characters
You might check the processor (non Tandy guess) although I'm not sure
what the random screens look like before the processor initializes the
screen will have seemingly random data until it clears the ram and loads
the rom.
That is precisely what it turned out to be! I pulled it apart yesterday
and swapped in a Z80A from the parts bin. Life is good again.
Now, to find out why the )*&)^ 2nd floppy drive has started giving me
trouble.
Steve
--
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barythrin＠gmail.com -
snhirsch＠gmail.com -
terry＠webweavers.co.nz