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MRS CP/M OS for Foundation Z80 Card


RickyDean

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1 hour ago, arcadeshopper said:

The cpm disks?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk
 

No the first disk posted in #12 was the terminal emulator to talk to the Z80 card with the ti. The same files are in each disk images- different formats. The later posted disks are the mrs files the foundation uses to boot and read cpm stuff, these sre images that I tried to recover and if you look into them with a tool there is data on those disk, but you stated these wouldn't open in the kaypro II emulator in Mame, so I don't know if their going to be usable for our needs or not, don't know if they can be edited to be turned into usable images. The OS for the foundation is MRS as stated in the manual.

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On 2/10/2021 at 8:44 PM, RickyDean said:

I used what appears to be a very good teac drive and was able to image the disk, that needs to be run from the ti to communicate with the Z80 card. Am loading that disk to Atariage now. The cpm disks will hopefully be posted in the next day or two. I have placed it in track image, sector image, and in image. It would be the initial disk, I believe.

FMASTER Z80 .dtk 254.14 kB · 9 downloads FMASTER Z80.dsk 180 kB · 10 downloads FMASTER Z80.hfe 981 kB · 9 downloads

So this is just fastterm.. not even a vt100 emulation is it?

 

Greg

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35 minutes ago, RickyDean said:

Don't know, haven't delved into this stuff yet. It is the ti side software to communicate with the Z80 card, that came with the software package I have. You may be able to use other terminal emulators to do the same thing.

Yeah Telco would be a better choice as it can actually do the vt100 emulation cpm would want

 

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  • 2 years later...

I'm bringing this up again as we have some new old folks, as well as some old old folks who may have had a foundation CP/M card. No one has been able to bring forward the software for this card, though I have tried, a couple of years ago, but wasn't successful. Do any of you have the disks for this machine that could be imaged and added to white as well as here? I do have a greaseweazel coming in this week and will try again with that. But if anyone has working copies, it would be better. Thanks

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Gentlemen and Gents, I now present to you the First disk designed to allow communication with the Foundation CP/M card with the TI. This was copied using a GreaseWeazle, I'm not sure if my previous attempt a coup[le of years ago was successful. You use Extended basic and Load the program ZE3 on the disk. Now I need to see if the other disk is around here to use on the CP/M side. I have Word star and others, but need to locate the MRS disk and try to flux copy it.

Term Emul ZE3.dsk

Edited by RickyDean
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12 hours ago, RickyDean said:

Gentlemen and Gents, I now present to you the First disk designed to allow communication with the Foundation CP/M card with the TI. This was copied using a GreaseWeazle, I'm not sure if my previous attempt a coup[le of years ago was successful. You use Extended basic and Load the program ZE3 on the disk. Now I need to see if the other disk is around here to use on the CP/M side. I have Word star and others, but need to locate the MRS disk and try to flux copy it.

Term Emul ZE3.dsk 90 kB · 1 download

this looks like just fast term from Paul C  .. seems to be modified a bit tho

 

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Here is my first attempt with the GreaseWeasle to flux copy the MRS disk for the CP/M card. This is the Hfe file, as I'm unsure at this moment how to save it out, I've tried the img. extension and can see data when I open it in notepad. Can someone test these to see if they work. I can. but will have to locate my CP/M card and set things up, probably a couple days. The are probably Double Density as the Foundation card was capable of that.

MRS_hfe.img MRS.hfe

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Here is a second disk with a label, listing files, CBAS2,CRUN2,MBASIC,MRS,SSP,FORMAT,XDIR,and XREF. These were the other two disks I can see data on them, but unknown if anything will be ultimately useful here. If they won't boot a cp/m card, maybe someone can grab individual files from them and try to create a bootable disk. I don't feel that a kryoflux would do much better. Heres the sting I was using to image these disks: gw read --drive 1 --tracks=c=0-39 c:/gw/MRS02.hfe::bitrate=250, maybe there is something better?

MRS01_hfe.img MRS01.hfe

MRS02_hfe.img MRS02.hfe

Edited by RickyDean
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As I am helpless here I just tried to convert one of your .HFE and .IMG to .DSK (using Lotharek´s tool),

but no gain (TI99DIR cannot open the resulting .DSK)

 

My ordered SchneazelWeazel will arrive from the UK soon, but I think  this won´t help here...

Was this the drive geometry that you have used with it?

(I saw some post about your doing, but cannot find it now)

 

image.thumb.png.2c907c400682729a5e1bead3e0f709a9.png

 

PS: Opening the .IMG via "LOAD" it tells me something about 36 tracks...

 

image.png.0ea7ad175942356dfe91e46470ee0f90.png

 

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15 minutes ago, Schmitzi said:

 

As I am helpless here I just tried to convert one of your .HFEs to .DSK (using Lotharek´s tool),

but no gain (TI99DIR cannot open the resulting .DSK)

 

My ordered SchneazelWeazel will arrive from the UK soon, but I think  this won´t help here...

Was this the drive geometry that you have used with it?

(I saw some post about your doing, but cannot find it now)

 

image.thumb.png.8cfc0b8af5359a42cfa1add4ca737cea.png

This was not done with an HxC. It was the greaseweazle exe file in a cmd window using the GW,

gw.exe read --drive 1 --tracks=c=0-39 c:/gw/MRS02.hfe::bitrate=250

I think the MRS files are not usable in a dsk format. I think that are cpm formatted disk images and have to use an image, imd, or td0 format or HxC hfe. They do not use the v9t9 ti  disk as the Foundation card is not a ti. Just sits in a ti peb box.

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@RickyDean

 

ah OK. I just thought if it is .HFE I can use it (and/or .IMG) with the Lotharek´s tool to make a DSK...

And yes, now I understand it has to be exported to a CPM format :) not V9T9 = DSK

 

- How are CPM images usually named, instead of .DSK ? Maybe I can look further)

- What did you get out of the Waezel, the .IMG or the .HFE ? (=what´s your original file?)


I am not sure, but I think your .HFE can be directly used with a Lotharek HxC drive,

(as HFE is a standard, but I have to check if CPM drives/formats are supported there)

...and of course, if so, it can only be used in combination with the CPM card that reads this format.

 

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9 hours ago, Schmitzi said:

@RickyDean

 

ah OK. I just thought if it is .HFE I can use it (and/or .IMG) with the Lotharek´s tool to make a DSK...

And yes, now I understand it has to be exported to a CPM format :) not V9T9 = DSK

 

- How are CPM images usually named, instead of .DSK ? Maybe I can look further)

- What did you get out of the Waezel, the .IMG or the .HFE ? (=what´s your original file?)


I am not sure, but I think your .HFE can be directly used with a Lotharek HxC drive,

(as HFE is a standard, but I have to check if CPM drives/formats are supported there)

...and of course, if so, it can only be used in combination with the CPM card that reads this format.

 

The HFE was original, the image was an attempt to create an IBM style image and if you open the file in notepad you see a directory structure. The Foundation Card was designed to use Kaypro II apps, so I believe the structure will be whatever CP/M 2.2 used by the Kaypro used.

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10 hours ago, Schmitzi said:

@RickyDean

 

ah OK. I just thought if it is .HFE I can use it (and/or .IMG) with the Lotharek´s tool to make a DSK...

And yes, now I understand it has to be exported to a CPM format :) not V9T9 = DSK

 

- How are CPM images usually named, instead of .DSK ? Maybe I can look further)

- What did you get out of the Waezel, the .IMG or the .HFE ? (=what´s your original file?)


I am not sure, but I think your .HFE can be directly used with a Lotharek HxC drive,

(as HFE is a standard, but I have to check if CPM drives/formats are supported there)

...and of course, if so, it can only be used in combination with the CPM card that reads this format.

 

On the FlashFloppy wiki it states:

Kaypro

Kaypro disk images are typically TD0 or IMD format. These can be converted to HFE, or to IMG (raw sector image). In the latter case you will require the format definitions defined in examples/Host/Kaypro/IMG.CFG, distributed with FlashFloppy. Copy this file to your USB stick.

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10 hours ago, RickyDean said:

More than likely, there is a lot of information on the net about people who have made their own CP/M machines. The Foundation used the WD2793 controller chip, so that could be a bit of the problem, but not impossible.

yeah it's gonna be a lot easier to just make a single board cpm computer that uses the pbox for power and has a serial port (which is exactly what the foundation is) OR just use the emulator on the pi connected to your tipi with telnet

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2 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

yeah it's gonna be a lot easier to just make a single board cpm computer that uses the pbox for power and has a serial port (which is exactly what the foundation is) OR just use the emulator on the pi connected to your tipi with telnet

 

OK for me as long as it uses the TI´s keyboard and the original TI joysticks :grin:

 

 

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10 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

yeah it's gonna be a lot easier to just make a single board cpm computer that uses the pbox for power and has a serial port (which is exactly what the foundation is) OR just use the emulator on the pi connected to your tipi with telnet

The TIPI telnet emulation is laggy and incomplete unfortunately, which makes for a suboptimal experience although it remains usable. And it's not possible to access the physical drives in CP/M emulation on the TIPI. On the plus side, one gets full 80 columns if an F18A is installed, and that's a huge plus.

In 2007 I actually used a P112 CP/M single board computer on a home-made PEB carrier card for power to add CP/M capability to the TI using a terminal emulator, and even got 80 columns with the Term 80 package , but again it could not access the drives. I demonstrated it at that year's Chicago TI Faire which was held exceptionally at the Evanston American Legion hall (http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/community/2007faire/2007faire.html). I have since dismantled it but it would be pretty easy to recreate.

The Foundation card used the native TI floppy drives, which is a definite advantage.

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