<If you're writing your own, it might be well to keep in mind that the BIOS
<used in several late-generation CP/M systems used device drivers which coul
It was late generation in 1981! I started doing it then. CPM had a formal
product called CP/M+ (CP/M3.0) to extend that idea.
<California Computer Systems (CCS) had a pretty nice boot process in which
<they loaded a skeletal BIOS in a 32K CP/M, since 32K was the smallest memor
<in which they claimed they could run. It wrote that to the boot blocks,
Actualy it was 20k for cpm2.2, as it was distributed as a 20k system that
you would run movcpm on to get the xxK version you wanted.
<then, under the control of that skeletal system, they loaded a "full-size"
<(you get to define that!) CP/M and transfer control to it. It's pretty
<solid and makes the preparation of a bootable disk a straightforward if no
<a quick process.
Yes and they were doing it a long time back, Compupro too. Kaypro was one
of the few "boxed" system that had the rom mapped to get a large TPA.
<IIRC, the XEROX 820 used a swapped-in BIOS which lived in PROM and was
<mapped into the TPA during file transfers, or something on that order. If
Classic.
<your machine can handle that, it saves on BIOS size, especially tables, etc
<and, generally speaking, if the READ operations from the TPA are from
<temprorarily mapped-in PROMs, you can overwrite the TPA in the event you'r
<loading overlays, with complete impunity. That way your blocking/deblockin
<buffer space can still reside in high memory.
An IMSAI can neither handle that nor not handle that. The basic design
had no rom! To do that you need a prom card with a little bit of hardware
to map it with an IO port.
The key here is to get a working system in whatever space... Why, it's the
development platfrom for itself. Once you have it running and can poke and
understand it the improvements will come.
Allison
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