essential CP/M files

From: Jim Battle <frustum_at_pacbell.net>
Date: Fri Sep 14 01:34:21 2001

Allison wrote:

At 07:05 PM 9/13/01 -0400, Jim Battle wrote:
> >If you were stuck on an island with a solar-powered CP/M machine and
>only
>one floppy disk in CP/M 2.2 format, which programs and utilities would
>you
>want on that disk?
>
>
>I'd have two floppies.

Actually, my emulator can be configured for zero to four drives, and as
many disks as you want to create.

>Any opinions of what I should distribute with the emulator? Here is what
>I
>am planning on so far:
>
>STAT
>PIP
>ASM
>MAC
>DDT
>ED
>DUMP
>LOAD
>SUBMIT
>XSUB
>
>
>How about a decent editor?

I used CP/M just a bit back in the day, and I'm only now learning a bit
more about it. Do you have any recommendations? I've seen TED in one of
the CP/M archives, but I haven't gotten far enough along to see if I can
get it to run on a Sol.

I have a half-completed project from a couple years ago to try and write a
"vi" editor in z80 assembly that would run in 8K-12K or so, but it got
interrupted by my work on the Sol. Maybe someday I'll get back to it and
make a CP/M vi.


> >Unfortunately, I don't have FORMAT, MOVCPM, PUTSYS, GETSYS, or SYSGEN
>since
>
>
>None of those are very meaningful for an emulator.

I agree, other than just for completeness.


> >Although there are lots of replacement programs for those listed above
>that
>are undoubtedly better than the stock CP/M 2.2 programs, I am going to
>use
>the originals from D.R. and leave it up to any user who cares enough to
>customize it as they see fit.
>
>
>Why? will the emulator provide a way to create a new disk drive?

I assume you mean disk, not just disk drive. If you really mean drive,
then yes, you can have up to four.

If you meant disks, you can make as many disks as you want. Each lives as
a "virtual disk" on your actual hard drive as a binary image. Floppies can
be single or double sided, single or double density. What you put on them
is limited only to what software wants to put on them in the real software.

In the real hardware, so in my emulated format too, sectors are actually a
bit bigger than the 512 bytes so that if someone had drivers that
understood some non-standard format (such as storing the track and sector
information in the header instead of just counting it in the driver) it
would work in the emulator too. Preamble and sync bytes are maintained in
the disk image as well, so if the driver doesn't write an adequate
preamble, the emulator can detect that and give a warning (if you want it
to). Does your driver use a non-standard checksum? No problem, the
emulator does what the hardware would.


>Allison

In time I hope to add emulation for the Helios disk subsystem
too. Actually, I think I have enough information to emulate the hardware
right now; the harder part will be getting the disk images onto a PC. Bob
Stek has some old PT-DOS disks, and in time, he or I will try to dump the
disk image out to a PC.

I think it would be a real archeological find to get PT-DOS running
again. Getting CP/M running on Solace is OK, but there really isn't much
mystery in CP/M.

If anybody already has a PT-DOS disk imaged somewhere from ages ago, please
let me know about it. I'd love to use it to get that phase of the emulator
project underway.

-----
Jim Battle == frustum_at_pacbell.net
Received on Fri Sep 14 2001 - 01:34:21 BST