Jump to content
IGNORED

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


Kyle22

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, moonlight_mile said:


Ok. Went back down and played around.

Pin 37 isn’t active during boot up. It goes low when I do the first dir.

When I ainit or xinit in single density the probe does not light up.

When I go xinit in double density it lights up and stays lit. Never goes out until the device Naks and errors out.

The head moves a little during the dd format but not the way a normal format head movement.

Now I’m confused.  Maybe I need more coffee.   

http://bitsavers.org/components/westernDigital/FD179X-02_Data_Sheet_May1980.pdf

It’s sounds like that is backwards or your probe isn’t hooked up right.  Or it’s working perfectly fine and we should compare to another ATR owner.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, moonlight_mile said:

I ordered some 7416s and sockets just in case.

Dumb question, can you piggyback the 7416s like we used to do with ram chips to see if the soldered chip is defective? (Get the idea I am try to avoid unsoldering the chips huh? Lol).

I doubt it.  There might be some chips that are tolerant to such a thing, but I think you are perhaps avoiding desoldering because it is difficult with the tools you have.  I don't use one of the fancy electrical desoldering tools, rather I do well with a desoldering iron costing about $20.00.  Here's a linik to the one I've been using for a couple of years now.  I just replace the tip every few months.  It is super important to have a fresh tip for delicate work.  Some boards have large vias that a worn tip will still work on, but small vias, new PCB's are famous four them, need a focused suction that a worn tip can't provide.  At any rate, here's the tool for you:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Another way to desolder is to clip the legs from the top of the chip, leaving them standing without the chip anylonger there.  Then you just use a soldering iron from the top to heat the legs and pluck them out with a pair of tweeters.  Then you clear the vias of solder and insert your new socket.  It is destructive of the original chip of course, but these are 74 series parts and not terribly important to preserve.

 

best,

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeffrey Worley
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now I’m confused.  Maybe I need more coffee.   
http://bitsavers.org/components/westernDigital/FD179X-02_Data_Sheet_May1980.pdf
It’s sounds like that is backwards or your probe isn’t hooked up right.  Or it’s working perfectly fine and we should compare to another ATR owner.  

Possibly. Here is what I am doing. Clip the black lead of the probe to the chassis and the red clip to the leg of the 7805 voltage regulator.

Set the probe to cmos (also tried it as ttl too) and kept the probe on pin 37 of the 1797.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I doubt it.  There might be some chips that are tolerant to such a thing, but I think you are perhaps avoiding desoldering because it is difficult with the tools you have.  I don't use one of the fancy electrical desoldering tools, rather I do well with a desoldering iron costing about $20.00.  Here's a linik to the one I've been using for a couple of years now.  I just replace the tip every few months.  It is super important to have a fresh tip for delicate work.  Some boards have large vias that a worn tip will still work on, but small vias, new PCB's are famous four them, need a focused suction that a worn tip can't provide.  At any rate, here's the tool for you:
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
Another way to desolder is to clip the legs from the top of the chip, leaving them standing without the chip anylonger there.  Then you just use a soldering iron from the top to heat the legs and pluck them out with a pair of tweeters.  Then you clear the vias of solder and insert your new socket.  It is destructive of the original chip of course, but these are 74 series parts and not terribly important to preserve.
 
best,
 
Jeff

Hmmmm that looks interesting. Well if it comes to working on the 7416s I will pick up one of those pumpers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/4/2020 at 2:17 AM, Jeffrey Worley said:

It for sure isn't the mechs.  If they format in SD they will format in DD.  Alignment can sometimes be a fault, but it is RARE and certainly would not present with multiple drives.  You have some kind of logic fault or, perhaps, as you said, a corrupt eprom.  That was a pretty good guess and easy enough to validate.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

Could be a bad bit in ram. 1st thing the ATR does at boot is to copy rom to high ram and disable rom.

 

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was the 1797. Got my order of 1797s and dram chips. Popped in one of the new 1797 and wala. Double density.

I didn’t play around too much with it but at least now I don’t have to have a bunch of sd and dd dos disks. Lol.

I am going to work on the cp/m disks tomorrow.

Well.... if anyone needs I will have a bunch of extra chips for an atr.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, moonlight_mile said:

It was the 1797. Got my order of 1797s and dram chips. Popped in one of the new 1797 and wala. Double density.

I didn’t play around too much with it but at least now I don’t have to have a bunch of sd and dd dos disks. Lol.

I am going to work on the cp/m disks tomorrow.

Well.... if anyone needs I will have a bunch of extra chips for an atr.

Hooooray!!!!!!

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is the best sector copier to use with the Atr. I have been trying copymate,tomscopy and one other.

Been trying to pull the cpmfiles.atr from my sio2sd and my ape device. They both choke. Now if I run it with the xf551 it will usually work but that will cause issues with the atr disk drive.

Any suggestions on the best sector copier for use with modern devices and an atr-8000?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, moonlight_mile said:

What is the best sector copier to use with the Atr. I have been trying copymate,tomscopy and one other.

Been trying to pull the cpmfiles.atr from my sio2sd and my ape device. They both choke. Now if I run it with the xf551 it will usually work but that will cause issues with the atr disk drive.

Any suggestions on the best sector copier for use with modern devices and an atr-8000?

If you are running HSIO drivers in your U1MB bios, then disable it for the drive numbers your Atr is set to answer to.

 

I used SCOPY to make the CP/M disk, then ran the utility to write the system tracks.

 

Remember to format the disk single-sided, and remember to format the other side of the disk as single-sided.  This will prevent the ATR from barfing in CP/M, from thinking it is reading a double-sided disk when it shouldn't.  You can't format a flippy on the ATR, so use a 1050 or whatever to do it.  Or, use a powerful magnet to scramble side2 of the disk before you start the process.  With a truly clean disk, the process of making the cp/m disks is a breeze.  Any sector copier that can do double-density will make the disk.

 

One sure way to make the disk is to format it single-sided double density, then run HDSC from the Spartados X command line and use it to write the disk out.  It only copies sectors, does not format, so there's on 'if' out of the way.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It doesn't matter where you run the CPMBOOT.EXE utility from, but the CPUfiles disk has to be in drive 1 and that has to be on the ATR8000.  For example, my hard disk is drive C (D3:) I ran the cpmboot utility from there with my prepared CPMfiles disk in the ATR8000's D1: And boomshakala.

 

Best

 

jeff

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ugh.  I am sooooooo close. I don’t think the cpmboot.exe is running correctly. 

Here are quick videos of my running the exe from spartados and mydos. 


Then the pic is what happens when I try to boot the CPM disk. 
 

I have written the cpmfiles disk with the atr drive and the xf551 just to see what would happen. 
 

So what the heck am I doing wrong?

 

 

D2B1DD85-17FC-449D-8C21-33D0D9512EA5.jpeg

Edited by moonlight_mile
video edit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, moonlight_mile said:

Ugh.  I am sooooooo close. I don’t think the cpmboot.exe is running correctly. 
 

Here are quick videos of my running the exe from spartados and mydos. 


Then the pic is what happens when I try to boot the CPM disk. 
 

I have written the cpmfiles disk with the atr drive and the xf551 just to see what would happen. 
 

So what the heck am I doing wrong?

 

IMG_2627.MOV IMG_2629.MOV

D2B1DD85-17FC-449D-8C21-33D0D9512EA5.jpeg

Hit B and Return, that is the ATRMON command to BOOT.  With the disk in the drive, it oughtta boot cp/m

 

Jeff

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, This disk is for sure formatted single-sided and the other side is either blank from the factory or has been blanked by being formatted single-sided as well?  Double-density (256byte sectors), 40 tracks, Single-sided.

 

 

Your movies work great.

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeffrey Worley
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

Ok, This disk is for sure formatted single-sided and the other side is either blank from the factory or has been blanked by being formatted single-sided as well?  Double-density (256byte sectors), 40 tracks, Single-sided.

 

 

Your movies work great.

 

Jeff

Yup. That is why I tried doing it in the xf551. Just to make sure. Same result. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jeffrey Worley

 

I finally got this process to work!

 

It *did* require formatting both sides of a *flippy*  (I have some disks with 2 notches and 2 index holes which work on the ATR).

 

Trying the same method with a bulk erased disk was not successful.  I got the same "C" response that moonlight_mile got.

 

I now have the 27-Apr-84 release of CP/M 2.2.  I don't know if it's an different than the Mar-82 version that came with my ATR8000.

 

Thanks for this!

 

 

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, a8isa1 said:

@Jeffrey Worley

 

I finally got this process to work!

 

It *did* require formatting both sides of a *flippy*  (I have some disks with 2 notches and 2 index holes which work on the ATR).

 

Trying the same method with a bulk erased disk was not successful.  I got the same "C" response that moonlight_mile got.

 

I now have the 27-Apr-84 release of CP/M 2.2.  I don't know if it's an different than the Mar-82 version that came with my ATR8000.

 

Thanks for this!

 

 

It is the better version by far.  The formats have changed from the 1982 version, but other things are improved as well.  The Diskdef utility is really handy.  If you can run any of the files on the disk, like ddsysgen or pip and have it actually WORK, then you are in clover.  make some spares.  It is really easy to trash a disk with the ATR8000, all you have to do is turn the machine on or off with a disk in the drive with the door closed.  Poof.  I put a label on my power switch to remind me.  Oh, I should mention, this whole formatting the other side of the disk to blank it thing is limited to making the ss/dd boot disk using the CPMBOOT.EXE utility.  It is not at all necessary for any other function.  It is a special case.

 

Still, now you know how to make a disk, you can make another easily enough.  The fellow who came up with this method is a freaking genius and deserves all the laurels we can hang on him.

 

So, to get your system up and running, run CONFIG and answer the questions as they are presented.  This will create a system with your system's specific drive configurations.  Then write the system to your boot disk.  Then reset the ATR8000 and reboot.  Next, format some double-sided disks and write the same system tracks to them, using ddsysgen to first read the tracks from your boot disk, then writing them to the new double-sided ones.  Now you have bootable double-sided media.  You can use PIP to move the files from your single-sided boot to the new double-sided media.  Once you are ready, you can boot the double-sided disk.

 

Best,

Jeff

 

Edited by Jeffrey Worley
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please note that the files that come with the different versions of CP/M cannot be interchanged for the most part. The BIOS is different and the files match the differences. There is a text file listing the changes. 

 

Can you please format a double sided 256 byte sector 5.25 disk and copy the files from the atr above onto it. Dont make it a system disk. Then make an atr image file of that disk from the drive connected to the atr8000. Then if you can, make an atr file using an xf551 of that same disk makeing sure that both read 1440 sectors. Please post both versions in this thread. That way, others dont have to use magnets ,witch craft and wizardry  to create the cp/m files disk. I had to assemble that disk by hand using a hex editor. Couldnt wrangle the double sided as ATR8000 and XF551 handle the 2nd side differently and did my head in.  Percom is different again!

 

It was a team effort to create the cpm boot file. My ATR8000 wont format (suspect fdc as mine has 1793 instead of 1797) so had to put file out there for others to test.

 

James

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, sup8pdct said:

Please note that the files that come with the different versions of CP/M cannot be interchanged for the most part. The BIOS is different and the files match the differences. There is a text file listing the changes. 

 

Can you please format a double sided 256 byte sector 5.25 disk and copy the files from the atr above onto it. Dont make it a system disk. Then make an atr image file of that disk from the drive connected to the atr8000. Then if you can, make an atr file using an xf551 of that same disk makeing sure that both read 1440 sectors. Please post both versions in this thread. That way, others dont have to use magnets ,witch craft and wizardry  to create the cp/m files disk. I had to assemble that disk by hand using a hex editor. Couldnt wrangle the double sided as ATR8000 and XF551 handle the 2nd side differently and did my head in.  Percom is different again!

 

It was a team effort to create the cpm boot file. My ATR8000 wont format (suspect fdc as mine has 1793 instead of 1797) so had to put file out there for others to test.

 

James

 

sorry, I only have the ATR8000.  I've never had any other disk drives for my A8s.

 

-SteveS

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

It is the better version by far.  The formats have changed from the 1982 version, but other things are improved as well.  The Diskdef utility is really handy.  If you can run any of the files on the disk, like ddsysgen or pip and have it actually WORK, then you are in clover.  make some spares.  It is really easy to trash a disk with the ATR8000, all you have to do is turn the machine on or off with a disk in the drive with the door closed.  Poof.  I put a label on my power switch to remind me.  Oh, I should mention, this whole formatting the other side of the disk to blank it thing is limited to making the ss/dd boot disk using the CPMBOOT.EXE utility.  It is not at all necessary for any other function.  It is a special case.

 

Still, now you know how to make a disk, you can make another easily enough.  The fellow who came up with this method is a freaking genius and deserves all the laurels we can hang on him.

 

So, to get your system up and running, run CONFIG and answer the questions as they are presented.  This will create a system with your system's specific drive configurations.  Then write the system to your boot disk.  Then reset the ATR8000 and reboot.  Next, format some double-sided disks and write the same system tracks to them, using ddsysgen to first read the tracks from your boot disk, then writing them to the new double-sided ones.  Now you have bootable double-sided media.  You can use PIP to move the files from your single-sided boot to the new double-sided media.  Once you are ready, you can boot the double-sided disk.

 

Best,

Jeff

 

Jeff, not since I acquired the ATR8000 in 1983 do I recall trashing a disk by cycling the power of the ATR8000.   I often cycle the power to register a disk.  Oddly RESET on the ATR8000 [edit] doesn't always do it..

 

I have occassionally trashed a disk by cycling the power on the disk enclosure with a disk still in the drive.  Even that is a rare happening.

 

But ATR8000s are tempermental.  Sometimes they just don't want to format in the density I want.  This is especially true if using the ATR8000 as the boot drive.

 

Things go smoother if something else is D1 with the ATR8000 acting as D2: through D4: [EDIT]

 

But yeah.  Formatting from SDX doesn't ever seem to work unless the ATR has D1: defined and there was already a formatted disk in it at the start.

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, sup8pdct said:

Please note that the files that come with the different versions of CP/M cannot be interchanged for the most part. The BIOS is different and the files match the differences. There is a text file listing the changes. 

 

Can you please format a double sided 256 byte sector 5.25 disk and copy the files from the atr above onto it. Dont make it a system disk. Then make an atr image file of that disk from the drive connected to the atr8000. Then if you can, make an atr file using an xf551 of that same disk makeing sure that both read 1440 sectors. Please post both versions in this thread. That way, others dont have to use magnets ,witch craft and wizardry  to create the cp/m files disk. I had to assemble that disk by hand using a hex editor. Couldnt wrangle the double sided as ATR8000 and XF551 handle the 2nd side differently and did my head in.  Percom is different again!

 

It was a team effort to create the cpm boot file. My ATR8000 wont format (suspect fdc as mine has 1793 instead of 1797) so had to put file out there for others to test.

 

James

 

Question:  Will your CPMBOOT then work on a new disk created from my new ATR?    

 

ATR could be a while in coming.  First attempt generated sector error(s) on the copy.  CP/M DDINIT formatted without bad sectors being detected.

 

-SteveS

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cpm boot is a modifyed version of sysgen file (whatever it is called) it formats only the 1st 2 tracks then writes the cpm system  out. Can be done to any data disk as the directory starts on track 3. However the sector size is 512 bytes (i think)  apart from sector 1 which is 128 bytes regardless of what sector size the rest of the disk was formated at,  so trying to make an atr image of one will fail. 

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...