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ATR-8000 (and other) CP/M System disks here


Kyle22

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For those who are still looking for ATR-8000 CP/M system disks, I found them here: http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/disks/atari/index.html

 

Link for other CP/M bootdisks: http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/

 

Here is all of Don Maslin's stuff: http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/cpm/Software/maslin/

 

You need an old MS-DOS machine with a 360K floppy drive (and a good controller), and the TeleDisk program here: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/teledisk.htm

 

Hope this helps.

 

-Kyle

 

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For those who are still looking for ATR-8000 CP/M system disks, I found them here: http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/disks/atari/index.html

 

Link for other CP/M bootdisks: http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/

 

Here is all of Don Maslin's stuff: http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/cpm/Software/maslin/

 

You need an old MS-DOS machine with a 360K floppy drive (and a good controller), and the TeleDisk program here: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/teledisk.htm

 

Hope this helps.

 

-Kyle

 

Not sure I had the exact same teledisk images but years ago I had some images. Unfortunately I never did own a machine that could produce bootable disks for the ATR8000. Sure I can do it with the ATR8000 itself but the last time I tried to mail real disks to someone the data was scrambled. (I won't blame the postal service).

 

I assumed the floppy controller necessary to make this process work needs to support FM but I don't know that is the issue.

 

Data disks were no problem but bootable disks are generally what new owners of an ATR8000 need first.

 

It would be nice if people had a reliable way to generate the disks themselves.

Edited by a8isa1
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IIRC, most people tried to copy the ATR-8000 CP/M disk with Atari copy programs, and, between the drive and the copy program, they wouldn't accept 256 bytes in the first 3 sectors.

 

These teledisc images should be correct. I HAVE NOT tried them, though. My ATR-8000 died a number of years ago :(

 

I always wanted to write a high-speed ROM for it. It uses a Z80 to bitbang, just like Indus.

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http://www.gaby.de/edownl.htm

MyZ80.ZIP

is a cp/m emulator that should let you work with image files but

http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/utilities/#ima2hpi

Using Ima2hpi tdunp found here I get file sizes of

145,777 for ATR8000.ZD0

and

37,095 for ATR8KBIO.ZD0

 

Which could be explained by my lack of familiarity with the tools except when I load the resulting ATR8KBIO.ZD0 into a word processor, it seems to be be a fairly complete bios source file with a lot of unprintable characters scattered here and there.

 

MyZ80 can mount the files but gets nonsense trying to get a directory. I would kind of think the uncompressed images would be either 180k or 360k.

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Right, the output is those files using the T(ele)D(isk)unp(acker) are the ZD0 images. Using the .BAT files that came with the converters I get a number of errors and it bails.

 

Which may explain why everyone gets bad images using Teledisk. Teledisk probably wouldn't bail out if you stuck a paper plate in your drive. *If* the images everyone is using are bad archives, Teledisk will just make a bad image.

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TeleDisk is VERY funny about different disk controller chips, and even different TD versions. It sucks, but, some strange combinations work. Use the oldest computer you can find. A 386 would be fine. A separate ISA card floppy controller would also be good. An old one with a real FDC on it. I think the 765 should work. 279x may also.

 

It's been a long time, now, I must build one :)

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That's not what I am doing yet <maybe never??> though. All I am doing is using unpacker or converter type software to convert the .TD0 files into raw non compressed images suitable for running on an emulator. Analogous to making an .ATR image from a zip file or Disk Communicator. Once I have that decompressed file, I run an emulator and mount the file. The sizes of the files don't make no sense and the emulators can't touch them.

 

I'll attach the bios source or at least what I was able to pull out. I did hit return/reduced the line length on the garbage but left everything in the file there so you could see it. To me it really looks like a corrupted file since the good stuff comes and goes with no rhyme nor reason.

 

It does have a few bits of info you can glean, for instance it says 1k byte sectors for the ATR8000. That could help explain one of the reasons the files got munged in initial copies. Source seems to bail at the print routines but much useful stuff is there. I didn't bother trying to run it though an assembler to see how much is missing. Too much work. :)

ATR8KBIO.TXT

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I noticed all the binary files I created still had TD as the first two bytes => T(ele)D(isk) id bytes/header is still intact => conversion to raw binary did not work right. Getting late tonight but I have all the tools I need to attempt a real conversion. I still have my Compatacard, couple of USB floppies, 40 meg DRDOS hd, assortment of other junk that hasn't run in years, Kind of late tonight and busy tomorrow but I will make at least a half hearted effort to get it going. Heck, sectors 1-5 being 1,024 bytes on an ATR is something I didn't know yesterday.

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The atr disk have 512 byte sectors. I have tried teledisk images onto some disks but it kakes the first sector at 128 bytes but then makes the rest at 512 bytes. I cannot get anadisk to see my 360k drive as one. It insists it is a 1.2m despite selecting 360 when installed. It always double steps grrrrrrrrrr. I finally found a tool that converts tdo to fdi ajd have been able to extract enough to dissemble the boot sector, cpm, atr bios and an overlay that overwrites a small part of the atari bios loaded into high ram from the atr rom. The bios source disk doesnt appear to be correct in some areras. I am hoping to get the atr to format the required disk structor then write cpm out. Will require much work. The atr has a Z device which can be used to do this via custom programs. As the init program calls the cpm bios, i need to see what is happening before i can even hope to start.

 

James

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The atr disk have 512 byte sectors. I have tried teledisk images onto some disks but it kakes the first sector at 128 bytes but then makes the rest at 512 bytes. I cannot get anadisk to see my 360k drive as one. It insists it is a 1.2m despite selecting 360 when installed. It always double steps grrrrrrrrrr. I finally found a tool that converts tdo to fdi ajd have been able to extract enough to dissemble the boot sector, cpm, atr bios and an overlay that overwrites a small part of the atari bios loaded into high ram from the atr rom. The bios source disk doesnt appear to be correct in some areras. I am hoping to get the atr to format the required disk structor then write cpm out. Will require much work. The atr has a Z device which can be used to do this via custom programs. As the init program calls the cpm bios, i need to see what is happening before i can even hope to start.

 

James

 

I am confident you know what you are doing. Kind of makes the problem a bit more curious. That broken file I attached has this in it:

"BIOS source code for SWP ATR8000 SSDD 1024 byte sector, 1-5, 3:1"

It could be the remains of 8" DD drive code.

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Indus cpm tho the same version is a different location. There is a device specific bios at the end of cpm it self to handle consol, printer ,disk etc. So the indus cpm wont work for the ATR.

 

I would love to go to VCFSE but there is a little puddle in the way called the pacific ocean. Oh and $$$$.

 

James

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Thank you. I do expect you to keep the dust and cobwebs off them. I don't want them dirty by the time i get to pick them up :grin: :grin:

 

Re the bios listing above. It is screwed up. The sector order is wrong so chunks are all over the place. Is what I found when i used a couple of image converters for the same result. Deblock.mac file doesn't appear to be correct (older code?) as well as same sector order problem.

What i have found, is the disk named atr8000.tdo doesn't have all the boot sector there, also there is a hole in the code (bad sector?) it is also 512 bytes higher in memory then the disk marked atr8k484.td0. Same version tho.

 

as a side note. the indus cpm starts at $E400. the cpm on atr8k484 disk starts at $D200. The indus cpm has more free memory if that counts for anything.

 

James

Edited by sup8pdct
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Burning brain cells trying to remember all the problems with early drives. It should not have made a difference since .TD0 images should be pretty raw, but I seem to recall there were formats that would switch between head 1 & 2<or is it 0 & 1?> for even and odd sectors and others where it would fill up an entire side before it started using the second head.

 

I have a couple of CP/M disks for systems other then Atari floating around. I'll spend some time reading up on basic structure. I'm really not much of a CP/M guy and same for Z80. I'm assuming the OS that loads from disk is hardware independent and just gets the I/O routines passed to it from the boot ROM. I don't think I have a MS DOS flavor on any computer right now. Slight edge to DEBUG over SID in that you can read/write raw sectors with Debug. Pretty sure I have a few W/95 installs on half a dozen hard drives, they should have Debug on them.

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I'm assuming the OS that loads from disk is hardware independent and just gets the I/O routines passed to it from the boot ROM.

CP/M on disk is composed of three parts, the CCP (console command processor), the BDOS (basic disk operating system) and BIOS (basic input output system). The CCP and BDOS are hardware independent, but the BIOS is COMPLETELY hardware DEPENDENT. The boot ROM causes the initial system boot from disk.

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I looked into the filesystem spec last night (good description here). Yikes. More than sixteen blocks in a file and it consumes more than one directory entry... no crazier than FAT LFNs, I suppose, but imagine CP/M upscaled beyond the limits of its design (i.e. multi-gigabyte volumes) the way FAT eventually was. FAT would then start to look pretty sane. :)

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Bring floppies to VCFSE 2.0 and we'll make copies there.

I hope to have an 8" drive also, but no promises. I'm borrowing one and haven't got it to test with my 8" floppies yet.

You can substitute a 1.2MB 5.25" for an 8" floppy drive. You can format the 5.25" 1.2Mb as a 77 track DSDD drive and it will format as an 8" on CP/M.

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After messing around for a while, I have a disassembly listing of CP/M including BIOS and Overlay for the atr8000. I also managed to create a disk that hopefully has a boot-able CP/M on it. I went to test it in my ATR only to discover it won't read any disk :(. Before you ask, it is the same mech i had connected to my PC to create the disk. (360k)). I also won't format either, but will boot and step drive to track zero. Now for the long process to try and find out why....

 

Re the disk images. They are for the most part screwed. Teledisk will create the images with errors on track 1. The sector order however from track 2 on are all messed up so getting any info off is hard. Teledisk also creates the boot disks with 1 128 byte sector on track 0, the other 8 at 512 bytes. track 1 has errors, from track 2 on has 1024 byte sectors!! :-o I have found a teledisk to FDI converter that i managed to get a file for the source listing below. If anyone wants the image to test, let my know and please tell me what file type.

 

James

 

ATR8K4841.zip

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