Wordmark ROMDOS Manual

[Curt Vendel]

Hi,

 

Does anyone have the manual or information on RDOS (ROMDOS) which is a ROM based very early version of MYDOS. It resides at $C000 and I have it installed in a RAMROD, but I don't know how to activate it. I've tried booting up with it installed and nothing is happening, I've tried holding OPTION and SELECT but its not doing anything. Any help would be appreciated. The ROM image is up on my Newell RAMROD page:

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/3rdparty/ExpansionBoards/OS/Newell/index.htm

 

 

[JR>]

OPTION/RESET and SELECT/RESET are the ways to get into Omnimon. or X=USR(49152)

[JR>]

I got excited when you listed the elusive 8K omnimon rom on your site. Unfortunately it just appears to be a 4K Omniview 400/800 variant.

[Curt Vendel]

Yes Option works fine on Omnimon but not is working on RomDos

 

On Omnimon, Ill double check the rom I posted, I just dumped the 8k Omnimon last night so Ill be sure to get the correct one posted up.

[JR>]

Here's the 8K OMNIMON Manual.

 

Newell Industries 8K Omnimon manual.pdf

[Curt Vendel]

Thanks!!! I will post up and credit you.

[JR>]

Don't credit me. I think I got it here:

 

https://archive.org/details/NewellIndustries8KOmnimonManual

 

Thanks!!! I will post up and credit you.

[1050]

Thanks Curt.

 

A little disassembly of the RDOS offering shows that

it isn't fired up by the usual Omni offering with a

run thru 0xC001 which is why it isn't playing for you.

 

But I did discover that it has a DOSINI of 0xCCB0 and

a DOSVEC of 0xCD38, so the standard way of firing up

a type 2 DOS is to do a run thru DOSINI followed by

a run thru DOSVEC. In assembler that would be:

 

JSR $CCB0

JMP $CD38

 

And you should have a valid RDOS up and running.

 

Over the next few days I'll attempt to make a XL OS

that has instead an 800 OS and this RDOS image at 0xC000

to see if I can use the emulator to fire off RDOS in the

above method to see if the theory works.

 

Lots of work to do here, but potential ideas are a

recompiled version that is more OSN friendly that does

fire off with a run thru the Omni GO vector of 0xC001.

Not a burning need so not expecting results right away

would be the smart move, but if I'm bored and looking

for something do, there is always this and further work

now that I have RDOS code. Again thanks Curt.

 

OPTION/RESET and SELECT/RESET are the ways to get into Omnimon. or X=USR(49152)

That BASIC command would be for 0xC000 and Omni is 0xC001

so X=USR(49153) would be more appropriate. Perhaps

 

X=USR(52400)

and then

X=USR(52536)

 

would suffice to do the above DOSINI and DOSVEC runs

outlined above? One should press RESET to cause the

system to do both in rapid succession if it doesn't

fly otherwise, but this no guarantee since the 800

RESET system is a tad bit different than the XL/XE

that I am used to working with. Might need to POKE

9 (BOOT?) with a one as well before pressing RESET.

RDOS should have taken care of this in it's code

being a ROM DOS, but I didn't spot it yet if it's

there.

[+Larry]

Hi Lee-

 

If you can get this working in an XL using an 800OS, that would be really neat. Rom Dos was one of the "holy grail" items in the early 80's, well before the XE's arrived and the "magic" of Dos 2.5 instant DUP swapping.

I knew only of one guy that had this in a RamRod + an Axlon + Bit3. As the song says -- those were the days!

 

-Larry

[JR>]

 

That BASIC command would be for 0xC000 and Omni is 0xC001

so X=USR(49153) would be more appropriate. Perhaps

 

X=USR(49152) is the correct entry point from BASIC and allows you to return to basic from Omnimon.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

RDOS is MyDOS. Written by Charles Marslett. You can find a little bit of information in the letters I posted on niet MyDOS page.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

PS my ISP killed my internet access while trying to upgrade it, so Im entering thuis on my iPhone. NOT FUNNY!

[1050]

Well it almost worked.

 

We seem to be missing a file called DUPR.SYS on D1:

now. So it would appear that the menu system for

RDOS is disk file that works with RDOS.

 

I'll need more time to flesh this out fully.

[Curt Vendel]

Thanks for all the hard work and sleuthing. Yes its my understanding that RDOS would give access to drives but youd need an RDOS disk in the drive with DUP on it if you wanted to access the menu.

[Curt Vendel]

I have RDOS(0.0) on disk and can post up if needed

[1050]

Please do. TIA

[Curt Vendel]

This new section is a little rough, Im still working on the CSS and template, then I will fully populate it, here is a link to the RDOS are:

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/archives/test/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=163

[1050]

Thanks Curt, I keep saying that.

The site as is looks top drawer too.

 

Not what I was expecting by any means though, definitely

MyDOS with subdirectories but carrying an OSS copyright.

I had no idea Marslett had colluded with OSS at any

time on a project like this.

 

But this critter is a different bird than the one I

was hoping for. What I was hoping for was an earlier

version of the 3.0 based, 800 only RDOS with an also

early version of DUPR.SYS that I might have made to

fly with the 0xC000 region RDOS we got a few messages

ago. That would have been quite a bit faster than what

follows.

 

So what I'm still looking at is to disassemble RDOS 0xC000

and determine the addresses that a potential DUPR

would need to jump into in the 0xCxxx region to

work with the ROM code there. There might be close

enough parallels with 3.013 that I have that might

allow such a DUPR.SYS to be recreated from scratch. It

would be 3.013 DUP.SYS overwritten for the most part

to work from the ROM DOS, might be easy, might not.

But I got to tell you up front that's a lot of work.

And I'm also in a time crunch, so rapid progress is

probably the last thing to expect.

 

I will be working forward nonetheless, anybody find

DUPR.SYS please post and save my sanity.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

From the letter Charles Marslett wrote to me (that you could have found if you would have looked at my MyDOS page):

 

 

I modified a version of MYDOS 3.016 shortly after the 800XL computer was released that I called RDOS (originally ROMDOS, but with 2 versions being RAM loaded, that seemed to be a poor choice of a name). RDOS rapidly went from version 0.0 to 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and ended its history as 1.4 (all in perhaps 8 or 10 months). The ROM version of RDOS could be programmed in an EPROM and run from the memory at COOO-CFFF with or without a disk drive on the system. The other two versions were loaded into RAM, either under an OSS Supercartridge or in the normal location at $0700.

 

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[1050]

Hi Mathy,

 

I had naturally assumed when he mentioned an OSS

supercart that it was more a designation of cart type

under development - NOT an OSS copyright on it. OSS

did that work and they mean to own it outright.

 

So the first offering of RDOS has no means to create

a menu other than to call on D1: for DUPR.SYS as it's

coded for in the 0xC000 region code. There would be

file access, functions of DOS would exist, but to

the user it's pretty much like having your hands

tied behind the back. Program use only as in calls

to DOS functions by means of program code only.

 

In my haste I've overlooked the starting version of

3.016 which I will attempt to correct right away,

thanks for the heads up on that because it might

have been a large waste of time to invest in 3.013

for very much longer.

[JR>]

On 3/24/2019 at 8:37 AM, Curt Vendel said:

 

On Omnimon, Ill double check the rom I posted, I just dumped the 8k Omnimon last night so Ill be sure to get the correct one posted up.

Hey Curt,

 

Just wondering if you'd ever gotten around to re-dumping that 8k Omnimon EPROM?  It will need to be dumped twice, once with the switch attached to the wire in each position to get the entire 8k.

[Curt Vendel]

21 hours ago, JR> said:

Hey Curt,

 

Just wondering if you'd ever gotten around to re-dumping that 8k Omnimon EPROM?  It will need to be dumped twice, once with the switch attached to the wire in each position to get the entire 8k.

Sorry, no I hadn't but thanks for the remind, now I'll put a post it on my desk and make a point to do it this weekend.

 

[_The Doctor__]

lol, that desk is full of post-its, how will you ever find this new addition, you've all ready exhausted the available colors of post-it to make it stand out!

 

I also worry that some of the older post-its have lost their stiction and have fallen behind it or on the floor... hopefully not swept away, vacuumed up, or hitchhiked away on the bottom of a shoe or rearward facing body part!  ?

 

-J

 

I am currently behind about 8 years in my work... best wishes

[+Larry]

I was thinking about RomDos, so did a search on it here on AA.  I found this thread and the RDos version that Curt had posted and decided to play around with it.  I did get it working.  Seems to work fine with Basic XL (but not BXE) using the translator A to provide a ram OS.  Results:

 

BXL with RDOS 0.0  Fre(0)=36373

BXL with MyDos 4.x Fre(0)=31599

BXL with Dos 2.5  Fre(0)=31986

Atari Basic with Dos 2.5  Fre(0)=31986 (just for comparison)

 

IIRC, I read a Bill Wilkinson article about using OSS Dos XL with a SuperCart, and "hiding" a chunk of the Dos under the BXL cartridge (regular Basic can't do this).  So I suspect that is what this version of MyDos does.  I need to find that article to refresh my memory.  This may also be in the BXL manual. (?) This is different than the original RomDos in the 800 RamRod, but the concept is similar.

 

Reading through this thread, MyDos version 3.016 is also a newer version of RDos? Is it posted somewhere?  3.016 is not the same as 3.16. 

[tep392]

I thought I would post my success on getting ROMDOS to run on my 800.  I started with the 0.1 binary that Curt linked to in the first post, though I had to get it through the Wayback Machine.  I burnt it to a 2732 EPROM and put it in the $C000 slot of my Ramrod. After a lot of searching I found the ROMDOS 0.1 disk posted by bob1200xl HERE.

 

And the result is 36106 bytes of free memory with BASIC.  This is compared to 32433 bytes with MyDOS 3.011 loaded.  Seems like a lot of effort for an extra 4000 bytes.

 

Finally, I'm posting the DOC that is on the MyDOS 3.011 disk because it does talk a bit about ROMDOS.

MyDOS3.011_Manual.txt

[ivop]

8 minutes ago, tep392 said:

Seems like a lot of effort for an extra 4000 bytes.

It's about what you expect if you leverage 4kB of spare ROM space in an 800    I don't think it was that much effort. Just reassemble most functions of DOS.SYS to $C000 and load an initializer and/or wrapper stubs in lower RAM.

 

But a cool product it was. Never heard of it before.