P112

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/2/19 8:36 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:
>   > The menu you get when you hit Escape on startup has an option for
>   > setting a floppy as 8".  Mine is ROM 5.7 which I believe is the next
>   > to last.  Unless it is different than the other CP/M systems I have
>   > FORMAT should have no hardware dependent code in it.  It was the OS
>   > that tracked and controlled what the underlying format of the
>   > floppies were.
> 
> That's literally the only thing I could find.  I can't see any place
> where a DPB is defined for an 8" drive.  If the DPB is wrong, FORMAT
> will misbehave.  I'd be utterly unsurprised if more parameters than just
> cylinder count weren't wrong.
> 
> You might try examining the active DPBs for the system to see what all
> it's using, and even correct it with a monitor or debugger.

I put 8" on a back burner for the moment.

> 
>   > > I haven't had mine out in a while, but last I did, the GIDE did
>   > > work.  Seems like there was some ordering of operations on HD setup
>   > > that I did wrong the first time.
> 
> The more I think about this, the more I think maybe the thing that
> "fixed" mine was wiping the drive before trying FDISK.

Wiping with what.

> 
> You didn't show the full FDISK session, or a listing of what partitions
> it thinks are there to begin with.  That might help shake free thoughts
> from others.

It starts out with no partitions and claims the partition table
is not a valid P112 table.  The "w" command fixes that but the
table is still empty.  Interestingly enough, a 64M CF in an IDE
adapter works with FDISK. but then when I try to "INIT" it under
RSX180 it prints a stream of garbage on the screen and does nothing
to the disk/CF.

Not sure how much longer I am likely to keep beating my head
against the wall.

bill