Multiplan on a Geneve

[+hloberg]

1 hour ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

I remember now why it is hard to find.. the path option is obfuscated quite nicely.  

 

The manual is our friend... don't type the final period or Multiplan will holler.

 

 

Wish I found the page you have. on page 155 is a short and rather cryptic description of Option that had me scratching my head till I figured it out. 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

22 minutes ago, hloberg said:

Wish I found the page you have. on page 155 is a short and rather cryptic description of Option that had me scratching my head till I figured it out. 

Oh, sorry, I thought I wrote that in my post!  It is found on page 13, in the Getting Started section, Use of Disk Drives.

[+hloberg]

15 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

Oh, sorry, I thought I wrote that in my post!  It is found on page 13, in the Getting Started section, Use of Disk Drives.

no worries.

[+hloberg]

putting together a post for my project blog on this subject. should be up in a few days.

[+hloberg]

well, I, think, I did correctly what @InsaneMultitasker suggested and changed 05 to 0A but I get 'illegal parameter' when I try to set default path to HDS2.MP with and without the period at the end. is it I'm using HDS2 instead of DSK5? honestly it doesn't matter to me as saving to root of HDS2 is just fine.

[+9640News]

26 minutes ago, hloberg said:

well, I, think, I did correctly what @InsaneMultitasker suggested and changed 05 to 0A but I get 'illegal parameter' when I try to set default path to HDS2.MP with and without the period at the end. is it I'm using HDS2 instead of DSK5? honestly it doesn't matter to me as saving to root of HDS2 is just fine.

The >0A @InsaneMultitasker referenced is the length byte for the path you set in hexadecimal in the PAB.  His path was like (excluding quotes) "HDS1.DSK1." which is 10 characters counting all the periods (2 of them) in the path.

 

Your "HDS2.MP" has two problems using >0A as the length byte.  First, your path must end in a period so it should have been "HDS2.MP." and the new corrected length is 8 characters or >08 in hex instead of >0A.

Hope this helps.

 

[+hloberg]

51 minutes ago, 9640News said:

The >0A @InsaneMultitasker referenced is the length byte for the path you set in hexadecimal in the PAB.  His path was like (excluding quotes) "HDS1.DSK1." which is 10 characters counting all the periods (2 of them) in the path.

 

Your "HDS2.MP" has two problems using >0A as the length byte.  First, your path must end in a period so it should have been "HDS2.MP." and the new corrected length is 8 characters or >08 in hex instead of >0A.

Hope this helps.

 

oh, it has to match exactly? i'll try that.

[+9640News]

18 minutes ago, hloberg said:

oh, it has to match exactly? i'll try that.

Yes!  What happens is the code looks at the length byte, and then adds the filename to the next byte after the length in that 40 character buffer @InsaneMultitasker eluded to earlier.

 

Your example of previous usage would have "HDS1.MP<space><space>FILENAME" which would have been an invalid filename with the spaces in the filename, as well as the missing "." following the directory name.

 

I can not say for sure, but in all likelihood, I would suspect there are 16 bytes preceding the filename that are part of the PAB likely beginning with an OPEN byte, followed by the rest of the PAB including file attributes and VDP location where to begin loading the file.  There is a chance the first 15 bytes of the PAB may be constructed from a different part of code, but more than likely, it is all grouped together.

 

Hope that all makes sense.

 

Beery

 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Agree with @9640News and I'd like to add that the sector editing method is separate from the steps in the manual -- they are two different processes that should not be co-mingled!

[+hloberg]

OK, I want to make this simple for others to reproduce when I post it to my project blog.

So, it looks like IF you want to do no sector editing (it scares some people) you can put the MSMP program files in HDS1.DSK.TIMP and then save the data files to the ROOT of HDS1 or 2. just change the location of the save dir in OPTIONS.

on the other hand, if you want to save the data files to a specific directory on your HD that will require editing >05 to the specific size of the directory name including the .(period) at the end as >08. but you still will have to put the new dir name in OPTIONS as, say, HDS1.MP.

sounds right?

Edited January 12, 2022 by hloberg

[+9640News]

1 hour ago, hloberg said:

OK, I want to make this simple for others to reproduce when I post it to my project blog.

So, it looks like IF you want to do no sector editing (it scares some people) you can put the MSMP program files in HDS1.DSK.TIMP and then save the data files to the ROOT of HDS1 or 2. just change the location of the save dir in OPTIONS.

on the other hand, if you want to save the data files to a specific directory on your HD that will require editing >05 to the specific size of the directory name including the .(period) at the end as >08. but you still will have to put the new dir name in OPTIONS as, say, HDS1.MP.

sounds right?

I'm not sure how the OPTIONS work with subdirectories.

[+hloberg]

ok, I tried it again exactly like you did and it still only will save to root. is it possible to send me the MPINTR file you used?

On a positive note got TIBASE to work in DSK1. but if you run with EXEC TIBASEP it runs but waaaaay too fast. typing reproduces multiple letters. so I run the XB batch and slow down with MYGPL f4 to 1.

[+9640News]

5 hours ago, hloberg said:

ok, I tried it again exactly like you did and it still only will save to root. is it possible to send me the MPINTR file you used?

On a positive note got TIBASE to work in DSK1. but if you run with EXEC TIBASEP it runs but waaaaay too fast. typing reproduces multiple letters. so I run the XB batch and slow down with MYGPL f4 to 1.

That wasn't me that edited the file.  I think it was @InsaneMultitasker

[+hloberg]

still working on MSMP with @InsaneMultitasker I'm sure there is something I'm misinterpreting cause if he's getting it to work I'm sure I can too.

still I am jazzed that TiBase worked so easily. Just wished it could be 80 column but you take what you can get.

that has the Geneve with a word processor, art program, spread sheet & data base, a full productivity suite. Microsoft Office, look out. ?

Edited January 13, 2022 by hloberg

[+Ksarul]

7 hours ago, hloberg said:

still working on MSMP with @InsaneMultitasker I'm sure there is something I'm misinterpreting cause if he's getting it to work I'm sure I can too.

still I am jazzed that TiBase worked so easily. Just wished it could be 80 column but you take what you can get.

that has the Geneve with a word processor, art program, spread sheet & data base, a full productivity suite. Microsoft Office, look out. ?

It has a hypertext program as well: HQ Stacks from McCann Software.

[+hloberg]

OK, looks like I have a working MS Multiplan in 80 column for the Geneve that boots and saves/loads from the HD. Had some issues with bad files but when I got it all straightened out it seems to working fine. After I do a few more test I'll post the new MSMP files.

[+hloberg]

weirdest problem with the .HD file I was saving the MSMP files to. for some reason it went corrupt but showed no problems in TIMT or MDOS other than if you tried doing a directory in MSMP it would shutdown MAME and a few files directories were missing on the .hd in MDOS but not TIMT. replaced the .hd and everything was fine. and of course now I can't seem to reproduce or find the bad .hd. sorry @mizapf

[+mizapf]

Hmm ... that is, I may keep relaxed until you can reproduce it? ?

Does "shut down MAME" mean a crash of the emulator (not of the emulated system)?

[+hloberg]

2 hours ago, mizapf said:

Hmm ... that is, I may keep relaxed until you can reproduce it? ?

Does "shut down MAME" mean a crash of the emulator (not of the emulated system)?

yup, MAME just turned off when MSMP tried to Save to my 2nd .hd drive (the one I found, later, had issues).  sometimes it give a .CHD can't be read error on exiting (did it so fast it took me a while to notice the error), sometimes didn't. the odd part was if I did a Disk Check in TIMT it showed no errors on the .hd. but (i later later noticed) the . hd drive had missing directories, only when viewing the .hd in geneve mame. weird.

oh, well, that's the reason we do backups. never know when 'weird' will hit.

[+9640News]

46 minutes ago, hloberg said:

yup, MAME just turned off when MSMP tried to Save to my 2nd .hd drive (the one I found, later, had issues).  sometimes it give a .CHD can't be read error on exiting (did it so fast it took me a while to notice the error), sometimes didn't. the odd part was if I did a Disk Check in TIMT it showed no errors on the .hd. but (i later later noticed) the . hd drive had missing directories, only when viewing the .hd in geneve mame. weird.

oh, well, that's the reason we do backups. never know when 'weird' will hit.

On your image, how many heads, cylinders, secs, and BPS's do you have?  I have a copy info on my images I use shown below for my HFDC image.  I have not done any testing with Multiplan on my image or real hardware at this point as I have been working on other items.

 

[+mizapf]

If MAME crashes, we have a good reason to dig deeper. Once you can reproduce the effect, please let me know.

 

Yes, and backups were never easier than today with our emulators. Remember back in those days when you wondered whether you should make some more copies of your floppies? And how to back up your hard drive, actually?

[+9640News]

2 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Yes, and backups were never easier than today with our emulators. Remember back in those days when you wondered whether you should make some more copies of your floppies? And how to back up your hard drive, actually?

Two ways for me to make backups of my HFDC.  Pull SD card from HFDC connected DREM and copy SD card onto Windows system, or use GDM2K and copy to TIPI path.

[+mizapf]

Yes, today, the real iron systems can also be better saved than 20 years ago.

 

I was always a bit afraid that my hard drive at the Geneve could fail, so I had backups of the most important things on floppy disks. Today, I can pull the micro SD card out of the SCSI2SD adapter and copy it on my PC in a card reader.

[+hloberg]

38 minutes ago, 9640News said:

On your image, how many heads, cylinders, secs, and BPS's do you have?  I have a copy info on my images I use shown below for my HFDC image.  I have not done any testing with Multiplan on my image or real hardware at this point as I have been working on other items.

 

I've learned best to stick with the default setup when TIMT creates a .HDs.

total sectors: 78720 (which oddly is a zipcode in Austin near where I live )

size 2

heads 4

sec/trk 32

sector length 256

 

[+hloberg]

OK here is the new and improved 80 column Microsoft Multiplan for the Geneve (Note: DO NOT use the 80columnMSMP or the various version all over on WHTECH . they are defective.) This one should replace those on WHTECH after it's check more (I have checked it for a couple days and looks good). so who ever has the WHTECH account...

It boots from HDS1.DSK.TIMP and saves/loads data files from HDS2.MP . Help files load off HDS1, seems to print OK but the original text of the conversion said there were issues with printing so be aware.

procedure to install:

put files from .dsk into HDS1.DSK.TIMP - this is where the files will boot from

create directory on HDS2.MP - this is where the data files are saved and loaded from

execute MYGPL HDS1.DSK.TIMP.MULTI-PLAN

when ask for load files just press ENTER.

if you want to change the save/load directory you'll need to modify the file MPINTR (later I'll go into editing the MPINTR and other things when I create a project blog on the subject.)

let me know if you run into a problem.

 

 

 

MSMP-GENEVE.dsk

Edited January 20, 2022 by hloberg