7 Apr
2018
7 Apr
'18
5:36 p.m.
It's not really Classic Hardware, but it does run some pretty classic
OSes.? Anybody here working with the P112?? I have had a couple for
ages but never had time to play with them.? I see them now as a
possible way to manipulate floppies (including 8") from classic systems
so I decided to give it a try.? Problem is, it won't boot anything.? Not the
disk that came with it and none of the images I got off the web.
Anybody here know anything about them?
bill
8 Apr
8 Apr
3:12 a.m.
I have a P112 (bought as a kit) which I have assembled and plyed with a bit.
Your description doesn't mention it, so we need more details:
- did you build the P112 yourself, or did it come pre-assembled?
- has it been working before? Or is this your first time trying it?
- which version of the ROM does it have?
- what are you trying to boot from, floppy or IDE?
Hope this helps a little.
On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 2:36 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
It's not really Classic Hardware, but it does run some pretty classic
OSes. Anybody here working with the P112? I have had a couple for
ages but never had time to play with them. I see them now as a
possible way to manipulate floppies (including 8") from classic systems
so I decided to give it a try. Problem is, it won't boot anything. Not the
disk that came with it and none of the images I got off the web.
Anybody here know anything about them?
bill
--
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen
6:37 a.m.
On 04/08/2018 06:12 AM, Torfinn Ingolfsen via cctalk wrote:
I have a P112 (bought as a kit) which I have assembled
and plyed with a bit.
Your description doesn't mention it, so we need more details:
- did you build the P112 yourself, or did it come pre-assembled?
Bought it assembled and tested.
- has it been working before? Or is this your first
time trying it?
First time I have tried it.
- which version of the ROM does it have?
ROM v5.7? dated 1 Oct. 2014
- what are you trying to boot from, floppy or IDE?
Floppy now, eventually it will be IDE.
Hope this helps a little.
It's a start.? Too cold to go outside again so I guess I get to play
with it more today.
bill
7:37 a.m.
Some more data points.
I have tried four different floppy cables and 6 different floppy
drives (different brands, as well).
I? had one combination where it actually booted the P112/GIDE
floppy.? Got sector read errors.? But wait, it gets better.? I rebooted
about a half dozen times.? The errors move.? Never the same sectors
twice.? What the system does depends on which sectors fail to read.
None of the disks created with winrawwrite work.? I am going to
assume at this point that USB floppies can not be used to build these
images.? I have a dos box with a real floppy interface but moving stuff
to it is not easy. (time to fire up Kermit again!!)
In most cases I get "unrecognizable disk format" or
"error reading boot track(s)" followed by "unrecognizable disk
format".
I do have to admit that I find it hard to believe that the cable to the
floppy can actually make a difference.
bill
8:37 a.m.
Success!!!?? Up to a point.
I have it booting on a floppy.? I have confirmed that you can,
apparently, not make disk images with an external USB Floppy
drive.
I am going to go back now and retest a bunch of the floppy drives
and cables to see if there really is a problem or if it was just the
images.? Of course, this means my original floppy is bad so I
need to find another copy as I think the stuff I need to use the
GIDE was on there.? I read somewhere that there is a copy on
the CD.? I wonder where that might be?? :-)
In case anyone is interested, I have a handful of floppy emulators
that use USB sticks.? Gonna give them a try, too.? What they work
with seems to be a real crapshoot.
Oh yeah, once I have the hard disk working it will be time to try
8" disks, too.
All t his could be real fun.
bill
10:02 a.m.
I am going to go back now and retest a bunch of the
floppy drives and
cables to see if there really is a problem or if it was just the
images. Of course, this means my original floppy is bad so I need to
find another copy as I think the stuff I need to use the GIDE was on
there. I read somewhere that there is a copy on the CD. I wonder
where that might be? :-)
The random failure thing makes me wonder about some floppy timing
parameter being just-almost too short.
Does either of these sites have any of what you need in terms of
software?
http://p112.sourceforge.net/index.php?downloads
http://stack180.com/P112%20Downloads.htm
De
10:11 a.m.
On 04/08/2018 01:02 PM, Dennis Boone wrote:
Got both of them.
Anybody have any step by step instructions for intalling OSes
to an IDE on the GIDE?? I see one about partitioning but not
sure how one gets the FDISK utility onto a bootable P112 floppy.
bill
I am going to
go back now and retest a bunch of the floppy drives and
cables to see if there really is a problem or if it was just the
images. Of course, this means my original floppy is bad so I need to
find another copy as I think the stuff I need to use the GIDE was on
there. I read somewhere that there is a copy on the CD. I wonder
where that might be? :-)
The random failure thing makes me wonder about some floppy timing
parameter being just-almost too short.
Does either of these sites have any of what you need in terms of
software?
http://p112.sourceforge.net/index.php?downloads
http://stack180.com/P112%20Downloads.htm
12:10 p.m.
I see one about partitioning but not sure how one gets
the FDISK
utility onto a bootable P112 floppy.
The cpmtools has a diskdef for the p112 formats. One could therefore
copy from images to actual floppies, assuming the needed hardware can be
coaxed into connectivity with a supported os. (Windows and Linux, at
least, are supported.)
De
10:34 a.m.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
I do have to admit that I find it hard to believe that
the cable to the
floppy can actually make a difference.
A minor point, . . .
On 5150/5160/5170, the SECOND drive is a straight cable, FIRST drive is
crossed. Thus, drive A: is at the end of the cable, B: is in the middle
of the cable.
The P112 manual
https://661.org/p112/files/p112-doc.pdf Page 10
calls for the reverse, with FIRST drive before the twist, SECOND drive
after the twist.
IF that is correct, then your first drie is straight through. That also
means that an unkeyed cable can be reversed, as one more to try.
Termination is rarely an issue with 3.5 inch drives, and not usually the
problem with 5.25". 5.25" has explicit provision for termination, but
wrong termination usually results in slightly less reliability, not often
a total failure to read.
I did not see any mention of the disk format.
If it is 512 bytes per sector MFM, with sequential sector numbering, then
even USB drives should work for making disks.
A different sector size, or even numbering sectors from 0, would be
problematic for some USB drives.
10:52 a.m.
On 04/08/2018 01:34 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
Yeah, knew that from other systems.? IBM really screwed that up.
Should have left it the way it was and have people set the Drive Select
themselves.
I do have to admit that I find it hard to believe
that the cable to the
floppy can actually make a difference.
A minor point, . . .
On 5150/5160/5170, the SECOND drive is a straight cable, FIRST drive
is crossed.? Thus, drive A: is at the end of the cable, B: is in the
middle of the cable.
The P112 manual
https://661.org/p112/files/p112-doc.pdf?? Page 10
calls for the reverse, with FIRST drive before the twist, SECOND drive
after the twist.
IF that is correct, then your first drie is straight through. That
also means that an unkeyed cable can be reversed, as one more to try.
Reversed cable will result in the drive being active constantly.
Easily noted by the LED being on constant and the drive running.
Termination is rarely an issue with 3.5 inch drives, and not usually
the problem with 5.25".?? 5.25" has explicit provision for
termination, but wrong termination usually results in slightly less
reliability, not often a total failure to read.
Just using 3.5" at the moment.
I did not see any mention of the disk format.
If it is 512 bytes per sector MFM, with sequential sector numbering,?
then even USB drives should work for making disks.
A different sector size, or even numbering sectors from 0, would be
problematic for some USB drives.
I have no idea of the format.? I got the images and rawrite.exe and
told the computer to make them.? They were unusable when I used
a USB External floppy but worked fine when I used a real internal
floppy.
I need to get the systems running before I start playing with reading
and writing weird formats.? But that is coming.
As a side note, I did get the system to boot and run from my floppy
emulator with a USB stick.? Have to boot twice.? First time you get
the unrecognized format error second time boots fine.? Interesting.
Good to know for when I am testing on other systems as well.
Small steps, but advancing, just the same.
bill
11:11 a.m.
>> I do have to admit that I find it hard to
believe that the cable to the
>> floppy can actually make a difference.
> A minor point, . . .
> On 5150/5160/5170, the SECOND drive is a straight cable, FIRST drive
> is crossed.? Thus, drive A: is at the end of the cable, B: is in the
> middle of the cable.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
Yeah, knew that from other systems.? IBM really
screwed that up.
Should have left it the way it was and have people set the Drive Select
themselves.
Yep!
IBM didn't think that users could be trusted to get that right.
Or at least Computerland couldn't be trusted to get it right.
Radio Shack used a different approach to drive select by cable instead of
making use of the well documented drive select on the drive.
Radio shack jumpered all drive selects on on the drive, and pulled pins in
the cable.
As opposed to IBM jumpering both drives as B: and twisting the cable for
A: (which also provided different control of motor)
IF that is
correct, then your first drie is straight through. That
also means that an unkeyed cable can be reversed, as one more to try.
Reversed
cable will result in the drive being active constantly.
Easily noted by the LED being on constant and the drive running. I did not see
any mention of the disk format.
If it is 512 bytes per sector MFM, with sequential sector numbering,?
then even USB drives should work for making disks.
A different sector size, or even numbering sectors from 0, would be
problematic for some USB drives.
I have no idea of the format.? I got the images and rawrite.exe and
told the computer to make them.? They were unusable when I used
a USB External floppy but worked fine when I used a real internal
floppy. I need to get the systems running before I start
playing with reading
and writing weird formats.? But that is coming.
Should be fun.
Is the FDC a 765 variant?
or a WD 179x variant?
As a side note, I did get the system to boot and run
from my floppy
emulator with a USB stick.? Have to boot twice.? First time you get
the unrecognized format error second time boots fine.? Interesting.
Good to know for when I am testing on other systems as well.
Small steps, but advancing, just the same.
Good luck!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
1:11 p.m.
On 04/08/2018 02:11 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Or, as in the case of some of the 1000 series (I had a TX my father an
SL) punch holes in the cable to
break the connection.
I meant reversing BOTH ends, end for end, giving same wiring.
in case some lines of the cable are flaky.
Too many different cable for that to be likely.
Since they mimiced the 5150 cabling, I was hoping that maybe they had
made the format similar, or at least the same physical format.
There are more efficient physical formats (using 1024 bytes per sector
easily gives you 400k/800K instead of 360K/720K)
SMC 37C651.? Supports? 500 Kb/s, 300 Kb/s and 250 Kb/s Data Rates.
Something else we lost with the PC.
Thanks.
bill
>> I do
have to admit that I find it hard to believe that the cable to
>> the
>> floppy can actually make a difference.
> A minor point, . . .
> On 5150/5160/5170, the SECOND drive is a straight cable, FIRST drive
> is crossed.? Thus, drive A: is at the end of the cable, B: is in the
> middle of the cable.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
Yeah, knew that from other systems.? IBM really
screwed that up.
Should have left it the way it was and have people set the Drive Select
themselves.
Yep!
IBM didn't think that users could be trusted to get that right.
Or at least Computerland couldn't be trusted to get it right.
Radio Shack used a different approach to drive select by cable instead
of making use of the well documented drive select on the drive.
Radio shack jumpered all drive selects on on the drive, and pulled
pins in the cable. As opposed to IBM jumpering both drives as B: and
twisting the cable
for A: (which also provided different control of motor)
Which also limited you to two drives.
IF that
is correct, then your first drie is straight through. That
also means that an unkeyed cable can be reversed, as one more to try.
Reversed
cable will result in the drive being active constantly.
Easily noted by the LED being on constant and the drive running. I did not
see any mention of the disk format.
If it is 512 bytes per sector MFM, with sequential sector numbering,
then even USB drives should work for making disks.
A different sector size, or even numbering sectors from 0, would be
problematic for some USB drives.
I have no idea of the format.? I got the images and rawrite.exe and
told the computer to make them.? They were unusable when I used
a USB External floppy but worked fine when I used a real internal
floppy. I need to get the systems running before I start
playing with reading
and writing weird formats.? But that is coming.
Should be fun.
Is the FDC a 765 variant?
or a WD 179x variant? As a side note, I did get the system to boot and
run from my floppy
emulator with a USB stick.? Have to boot twice.? First time you get
the unrecognized format error second time boots fine. Interesting.
Good to know for when I am testing on other systems as well.
Small steps, but advancing, just the same.
Good luck! 
2:52 p.m.
On 04/08/2018 04:11 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
SMC 37C651.? Supports? 500 Kb/s, 300 Kb/s and 250 Kb/s Data
Rates.
Something else we lost with the PC. The 37C651 is 765 variant,? so any PC should be
able to create a
compatible disk.
Least for my CP/M systems its never been an issue.? considering I'e used
8/5.25/3.5 drives
on the same boxes it should not be a big deal.
Some notes:? The 37C651 and its kin all have minimal drive so long
cables are
out as they pick up noise.? Keep the cable away from monitor (crt based)
and any
switching power supplies.? Use a separate ground wire from the drive
frame to
the board ground.
The IDE interface same deal, short cable only and one drive.? CF works.
When making a disk first ERASE IT using a degausser then format and copy
to it.
Also make sure the drives are the same TPI, your trying to make life easier.
I've had the best luck with older PC 5.25 like Toshiba and Teac.? For
3.5 Sony
and Toshiba are the go to but if all else use the same drive to write it
and read
(that means moving it).
One last detail make sure all the voltages (+5, +12,-12) are good and clean.
Allison
On 04/08/2018 02:11 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Radio Shack used a different approach to drive select by cable instead
of making use of the well documented drive select on the drive.
Radio shack jumpered all drive selects on on the drive, and pulled
pins in the cable.
OR used a straight cable and people used the drive select.
I need to get the systems running before I start
playing with reading
and writing weird formats.? But that is coming.
Should be fun.
Is the FDC a 765 variant?
or a WD 179x variant?
6:02 p.m.
Should have left it the way it was and have people set
the Drive Select
themselves.
> Radio Shack used a different approach to drive select by cable instead
> of making use of the well documented drive select on the drive.
> Radio shack jumpered all drive selects on on the drive, and pulled
> pins in the cable.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, allison via cctalk wrote:
OR used a straight cable and people used the drive
select.
THAT's the approach if users are smart enough to read simple instructions
and follow them.
Unfortunately,
SOME users, or store technicians, are not smart enough to handle it.
AND, PC dominated the market so thoroughly that some drives are shipped
hardwired to PC jumpering, so for anything other than B:, it may be
necessary to cut and solder to switch back to normal jumpers.
SMC 37C651.?
Supports? 500 Kb/s, 300 Kb/s and 250 Kb/s Data Rates.
Something else we lost with the PC.
The 37C651 is 765 variant,? so any PC should
be able to create a
compatible disk.
Least for my CP/M systems its never been an issue.? considering I'e used
8/5.25/3.5 drives
on the same boxes it should not be a big deal. Some notes:? The 37C651 and its kin all have minimal
drive so long
cables are
out as they pick up noise.? Keep the cable away from monitor (crt based)
and any
switching power supplies.? Use a separate ground wire from the drive
frame to
the board ground.
The IDE interface same deal, short cable only and one drive.? CF works.
When making a disk first ERASE IT using a degausser then format and copy
to it.
Also make sure the drives are the same TPI, your trying to make life easier.
I've had the best luck with older PC 5.25 like Toshiba and Teac.? For
3.5 Sony
and Toshiba are the go to but if all else use the same drive to write it
and read
(that means moving it).
One last detail make sure all the voltages (+5, +12,-12) are good and clean.
5:55 p.m.
> Should be fun.
> Is the FDC a 765 variant?
> or a WD 179x variant?
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
SMC 37C651.? Supports? 500 Kb/s, 300 Kb/s and 250 Kb/s
Data Rates.
Something else we lost with the PC.
That's a 765 variant. Made by several companies, even WD!
Most of those can handle FM/"single density".
5.25" single density is 125K bps
It might support it,> Should have left it the way it was and have people
set the Drive Select
themselves.
in spite of not mentioning it.
9 Apr
9 Apr
3:59 a.m.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
All the P112 boards I distributed use a FDC37C665IR super-IO chip from
SMC. I don't know which variant David Brooks used. I never acquired one
made by him. In case anyone wants more P112s, it's that chip that's the
big sticking point for why I don't have anymore. The board stuffer's
robots had problems dealing with pulls. The legs had to be absolutely
perfect, so I had to get new-old-stock chips. I've recently discovered
how to do a good job of soldering QFPs by hand, so maybe I could work that
angle.
The weirdness of the how the floppy drive cabling works with the P112 had
me baffled for the longest time. Terry and I thought it would be best
though to just leave those quirks alone when it came time to update the
firmware.
--
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> Should be
fun.
> Is the FDC a 765 variant?
> or a WD 179x variant?
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
SMC 37C651.? Supports? 500 Kb/s, 300 Kb/s and 250
Kb/s Data Rates.
Something else we lost with the PC.
That's a 765 variant. Made by several companies, even WD!
Most of those can handle FM/"single density".
5.25" single density is 125K bps
It might support it,> Should have left it the way it was and have people set
the Drive Select
themselves.
in spite of not mentioning it.
4:14 a.m.
On Sun, 8 Apr 2018, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
I have no idea of the format.? I got the images and
rawrite.exe and
told the computer to make them.? They were unusable when I used
a USB External floppy but worked fine when I used a real internal
floppy.
I need to get the systems running before I start playing with reading
and writing weird formats.? But that is coming.
As a side note, I did get the system to boot and run from my floppy
emulator with a USB stick.? Have to boot twice.? First time you get
the unrecognized format error second time boots fine.? Interesting.
Good to know for when I am testing on other systems as well.
Small steps, but advancing, just the same.
bill
I seem to recall using a USB floppy drive to make P112 disks, but I also
did it using a Linux machine with the dd command. The rawrite.exe program
is very old and I suspect it and modern Windows systems don't see
eye-to-eye anymore.
The format is described in the cpmtools diskdefs file. Below are the
entries that seem most relevant to the P112.
diskdef p112
seclen 512
tracks 160
sectrk 18
blocksize 2048
maxdir 256
skew 1
boottrk 2
os 3
end
diskdef p112-old
seclen 512
tracks 160
sectrk 18
blocksize 2048
maxdir 128
skew 1
boottrk 1
os 3
end
diskdef gide-cfa
seclen 512
tracks 1000
sectrk 16
blocksize 4096
maxdir 1024
skew 0
boottrk 2
os 3
end
diskdef gide-cfb
seclen 512
tracks 1000
sectrk 16
blocksize 4096
maxdir 1024
skew 0
boottrk 0
# Start of second partition
offset 1000trk
os 3
end
--
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
7:03 a.m.
On 2018-04-08 08:37, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
None of the disks created with winrawwrite work.? I am going to
assume at this point that USB floppies can not be used to build these
images.? I have a dos box with a real floppy interface but moving stuff
to it is not easy. (time to fire up Kermit again!!)
No idea if it helps, but if you're doing it really on Win***, you have
to make sure, you have administrator rights, and switch off any
virus-scanners, active-protection or whatever software which could run
in the background. They usually block the access to the first "tracks"
of a device, without any warning ...
Have the same problem, when I try to write complete sd-cards for my
FPGAs, and forget about that ;-)
Cheers
6 p.m.
Hi Bill,
On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 12:36:35AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
It's not really Classic Hardware, but it does run some pretty classic
OSes.? Anybody here working with the P112?? I have had a couple for
ages but never had time to play with them.? I see them now as a
possible way to manipulate floppies (including 8") from classic systems
so I decided to give it a try.? Problem is, it won't boot anything.? Not the
disk that came with it and none of the images I got off the web.
Anybody here know anything about them?
I see you have made progress since this post, but I wanted to chime
in. I have two, with GIDE cards, and booting from CF cards. One has the
LAN interface card (see http://stack180.com/). I haven't been using
the floppies, though have always meant to try to get it to do SSSD
8" format for compatibility with tons of CP/M floppies I have.
I was always surprised not to hear more from other p112 users.
There is a mailing list, but the last post I know of was five years
ago when I asked if anyone else was on the list.
http://lists.feedle.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p112
Mark
--
Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com), KC3DRE
10 Apr
10 Apr
3:26 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Apr 2018, Mark G Thomas via cctalk wrote:
Hi Bill,
On Sun, Apr 08, 2018 at 12:36:35AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
It seems that most P112 discussion happens here or on comp.os.cpm.
--
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
It's not really Classic Hardware, but it does run some pretty classic
OSes.? Anybody here working with the P112?? I have had a couple for
ages but never had time to play with them.? I see them now as a
possible way to manipulate floppies (including 8") from classic systems
so I decided to give it a try.? Problem is, it won't boot anything.? Not the
disk that came with it and none of the images I got off the web.
Anybody here know anything about them?
I see you have made progress since this post, but I wanted to chime
in. I have two, with GIDE cards, and booting from CF cards. One has the
LAN interface card (see http://stack180.com/). I haven't been using
the floppies, though have always meant to try to get it to do SSSD
8" format for compatibility with tons of CP/M floppies I have.
I was always surprised not to hear more from other p112 users.
There is a mailing list, but the last post I know of was five years
ago when I asked if anyone else was on the list.
http://lists.feedle.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p112
2451
days inactive
2453
days old
19 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
allisonportable＠gmail.com -
bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dave＠661.org -
drb＠msu.edu -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
Mark＠Misty.com -
tingox＠gmail.com