Weird ROMPAGE behaviour...

[+InsaneMultitasker]

REMAP is the correct command.   

 

Please load MDOS 6.50, confirm that you can access both ramdisks from MDOS with the  DIR command.  Then, type "remap" and share the information that is displayed. 

Next, load MDOS 7.30 and type REMAP to display the settings.  You may then use the command to match the values. 

 

I can think of a few possible reasons for the problems but first we must rule out REMAP settings.

[Brufnus]

26 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

REMAP is the correct command.   

 

Please load MDOS 6.50, confirm that you can access both ramdisks from MDOS with the  DIR command.  Then, type "remap" and share the information that is displayed. 

Next, load MDOS 7.30 and type REMAP to display the settings.  You may then use the command to match the values. 

 

I can think of a few possible reasons for the problems but first we must rule out REMAP settings.

MDOS 6.50 works fine with both Horizons, the Hoddie-modded is at >1400 and the other one is at >1600, respectively H:/DSK6. and I:/DSK7.

When I type REMAP with no parameters in 6.50, it says

USAGE: REMAP 5N / Current:

1A

2B

3C

4D

5E

6F

7G

8N

90

 

And, voila! When I enter the same parameters in MDOS 7.30, I can dir both drives!!

I can see it doesn't remember this after a reboot/power cycle, but now I've added those values to AUTOEXEC, and everything's fine.

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by Brufnus
I've found the answer myself...

[+InsaneMultitasker]

MDOS 7.30 changed the defaults to use the newer "16-bit" addressable ramdisks (3000, 4000, 4000B).

 

The other change is that the REMAP settings for drives 5,6,7,8,9 are now persistent, even through a warm restart.  This means that if you set the appropriate remap in your AUTOEXEC, pressing ctrl-alt-del or using the ampersand "&" will no longer wipe away the remaps for those drives.  A full power reset or shift-shift-control will reset the settings to default.

 

I am still considering whether or not to update CYA or to build a slightly different tool to help with these configurations.

 

Was there some other problem you were having, per your earlier post?  Congratulations on resolving the remap issue and I am glad to hear the 8-bit ramdisks still work properly!    

 

 

[Brufnus]

33 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

MDOS 7.30 changed the defaults to use the newer "16-bit" addressable ramdisks (3000, 4000, 4000B).

 

The other change is that the REMAP settings for drives 5,6,7,8,9 are now persistent, even through a warm restart.  This means that if you set the appropriate remap in your AUTOEXEC, pressing ctrl-alt-del or using the ampersand "&" will no longer wipe away the remaps for those drives.  A full power reset or shift-shift-control will reset the settings to default.

 

I am still considering whether or not to update CYA or to build a slightly different tool to help with these configurations.

 

Was there some other problem you were having, per your earlier post?  Congratulations on resolving the remap issue and I am glad to hear the 8-bit ramdisks still work properly!    

 

 

Okay, I see! Well, no... I've solved the initial problems, but it turns out I've just encountered a new one. For some reason, after these changes, I can't access my floppy drives anymore; not even with MDOS 6.50. c".) I've checked the config with CYA and even tried overwriting the Horizon's SYSTEM/SYS with a backup copy, but the HFDC simply won't read the floppies anymore... weird. c".)

Edited May 28, 2021 by Brufnus

[+InsaneMultitasker]

HFDC remaps are J,K,L,M -- your MDOS 6.50 remap showed A,B,C,D.  So maybe there is something over-riding the settings elsewhere? 

 

CYA does not work with mdos 7.30. 

 

[Brufnus]

5 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

HFDC remaps are J,K,L,M -- your MDOS 6.50 remap showed A,B,C,D.  So maybe there is something over-riding the settings elsewhere? 

 

CYA does not work with mdos 7.30. 

 

No, I checked the config with CYA in 6.50 only. Well, it doesn't respond to anything. Shouldn't the remappings be reset to their previous settings when I load a different SYSTEM/SYS?

Luckily I do have another HFDC I can test with, if everything else fails... or perhaps even install my inherited Atronics disk controller.

[Brufnus]

38 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

HFDC remaps are J,K,L,M -- your MDOS 6.50 remap showed A,B,C,D.  So maybe there is something over-riding the settings elsewhere? 

 

CYA does not work with mdos 7.30. 

 

There, that's better! I got an idea - when everything else fail, GPL comes to your aid!

Thus, after a ROMPAGE run, it turns out I can access DSK1 from the GPL menu.

 

So it definitely has something to do with the MDOS mapping, regardless of my attempts to reset the problem with another SYSTEM/SYS.

 

Anyway, my config is as follows:

- Geneve with MEMEX, totalling 1.5 MEG

- One HFDC with 32K upgrade and 1.44M floppy chip (96xxB or whatever it's called)

- One Horizon 8-bit 184K ramdisk with Hoddie EPROM (which should be set as DSK6./H:)

- One Horizon 8-bit 250K ramdisk with std. ROS (which should be set as DSK7./I:)

- One RS232 card, orig. TI

- One 360K floppy drive, 5 1/4 inch (should be DSK1./A:)

- One 1.44M floppy drive, 3 1/2 inch (should be DSK2./B:)

 

Anyway, at least I can access my floppies for now. I was afraid something serious had happened to the HFDC for some reason... c".)

[Brufnus]

1 hour ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

HFDC remaps are J,K,L,M -- your MDOS 6.50 remap showed A,B,C,D.  So maybe there is something over-riding the settings elsewhere? 

 

CYA does not work with mdos 7.30. 

 

Yes of course... it seems I've been away from the Geneve for far too long. You were right about J,K,L and M; it wasn't mapped to the HFDC floppy controller. After setting this correctly with CYA I can read both floppies from MDOS once again.

It's still a riddle, why the h*** the former copies of SYSTEM/SYS did the same, but never mind - problem solved!

 

Thanks for your help, and for your patience with me. I think I'll do some more reading and testing with the 7.30; I also look forward to see what happens with the CYA... if it's updated or something else takes it's place. It never fails to amaze me how you guys manage to keep the Geneve and TI alive, thanks for all your efforts!

 

Oh, by the way... am I correct the ROS chip on the 8-bit Horizons is the single one at the end of the print, near the LED's?

Edited May 28, 2021 by Brufnus

[Brufnus]

There... after remapping MDOS7.30 with the correct settings, I can access both floppies and both Horizon's. The flow of all this tells me that the 6.50 version for some reason were mapped incorrectly, even before I applied these settings to 7.30. I can't tell how that happened, but apparently I did something wrong at some point, ha ha

But I've definitely learned a lot about our Geneve in the last couple of days; frankly before all of this I didn't even know in detail what ROMPAGE actually did... but after learning about this, it all makes a lot more sense to me. c",)

Edited May 28, 2021 by Brufnus

[Brufnus]

Oh, by the way... MDOS 7.30 echoes the AUTOEXEC commands, no matter what I do...?

[+9640News]

1 hour ago, Brufnus said:

Oh, by the way... MDOS 7.30 echoes the AUTOEXEC commands, no matter what I do...?

Remove the ECHO statement from your AUTOEXEC.

[Brufnus]

1 hour ago, 9640News said:

Remove the ECHO statement from your AUTOEXEC.

I did, but it echoes nonetheless...

[+9640News]

24 minutes ago, Brufnus said:

I did, but it echoes nonetheless...

Show your AUTOEXEC.  I assume you are using MDOS 7.30?

[+InsaneMultitasker]

7 hours ago, Brufnus said:

Yes of course... it seems I've been away from the Geneve for far too long. You were right about J,K,L and M; it wasn't mapped to the HFDC floppy controller. After setting this correctly with CYA I can read both floppies from MDOS once again.

It's still a riddle, why the h*** the former copies of SYSTEM/SYS did the same, but never mind - problem solved!

CYA over-rides the floppy controller detection for drives 1-4.  This is intended and works well so long as you know you must set the drives.  What is not so apparent is that if you load system/sys into CYA, the drive remap configuration is enforced when you save the OS back to disk - even if you didn't change the remaps.  Since the default remap is A,B,C,D you can unwittingly override the HFDC detection.  So it is possible that your former copies were in fact modified, just not the way you intended.

 

[Brufnus]

15 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

CYA over-rides the floppy controller detection for drives 1-4.  This is intended and works well so long as you know you must set the drives.  What is not so apparent is that if you load system/sys into CYA, the drive remap configuration is enforced when you save the OS back to disk - even if you didn't change the remaps.  Since the default remap is A,B,C,D you can unwittingly override the HFDC detection.  So it is possible that your former copies were in fact modified, just not the way you intended.

 

Okay, I see... that's probably what has happened. It's a good way to learn such things though; if merely told so it may slip your mind again, but when you actually experience it, it's so much easier to remember in the future, I think. Thanks for the explanation!

 

Here's my AUTOEXEC:

TIMODE

VIDEO FAST

REMAP 1J

REMAP 2K etc,

E:

ASSIGN H=DSK6:

ASSIGN I=DSK7:

 

It did stop echoing after I created a new AUTOEXEC from scratch from the command prompt, but when I added the ASSIGN statements, it started echoing again.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Brufnus

[+mizapf]

If you don't need the TI mode, does it make sense to add it to AUTOEXEC? I'm not sure how GeneveOS 7.30 behaves at that point, i.e. whether memory is reserved.

[Brufnus]

25 minutes ago, mizapf said:

If you don't need the TI mode, does it make sense to add it to AUTOEXEC? I'm not sure how GeneveOS 7.30 behaves at that point, i.e. whether memory is reserved.

I frequently use different programs from the GPL mode, which may not be necessary since the introduction of the EXEC utility, but I prefer that way... old habit, I guess. c",)

I also have 1.5M available on the Geneve, so I think I can spare the memory. It's possible I'll remove it in the future, though.

 

Oh, and... I think 7.30 behaves as the previous versions; after all they added the TIMODE2 to avoid using the 64K reserved for TI Writer... or something like that.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Brufnus

[+mizapf]

I prefer a start script for GPL mode that contains the TIMODE command, e.g. "GPLS". This must be run as "&GPLS" to act as an AUTOEXEC file.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

For whatever it is worth, I now use TIMODE2 at startup for my primary development Geneve  (64K SRAM + 512 DRAM) and I haven't run into any memory issues with -most- programs.  I rarely use MyWord, which is the primary (only?) reason for using the original TIMODE.  At some point in the future, TIMODE and TIMODE2 operation may be flipped so that the default is NOT to reserve the extra 64K memory.

[+mizapf]

There may also be some personal attitude against the GPL mode on my side, to be honest. Although I used it frequently in the first years that I got my Geneve, I tried to stay increasingly longer on the native side, and some years later I used to write programs for the native mode only.

[Brufnus]

1 hour ago, mizapf said:

I prefer a start script for GPL mode that contains the TIMODE command, e.g. "GPLS". This must be run as "&GPLS" to act as an AUTOEXEC file.

That's a good idea. Perhaps I should do the same. c",) No need to expend the RAM unless it's actually being used.

[Brufnus]

Perhaps I should start a new thread, since this is not-so-related anymore.

 

Anyway, many years ago I upgraded the floppy IC on the HFDC and gave it the 32K upgrade, which allowed me to use 3.5" 1.44 MB floppies. The number of sectors on these "giant" floppies are mindblowing!

 

I've never had any success with booting from them, though. It's configured as DSK2. since I prefer to have a "proper" 5 1/4" drive as #1.

After meddling with some way to transfer .DSK files to 3.5" disks with Linux (with no luck yet, but I've found and old ISA floppy controller, which might do the job), I started considering that perhaps my boot problems were not so much related to the disk size and type, but rather it's capacity.

Thus, I've finally managed to boot off DSK2. from the HFDC, after having formatted the disk as 360 KB only (18 sectors, 40 tracks). Wheeeyyy!

Now I'll push it a little and see if I can be as lucky with a 720 KB / 80 tracks version.

 

Since 5 1/4" disks become more and more scarce, and 3.5" are quite a lot more reliable, I think this revelation will help me (and perhaps others) in the future, now that I've finally allowed myself the time for our beloved Geneve once again. c",)

[Brufnus]

Yep, it boots like expected from a 720 KB disk, too. Apparently it's only the 1.44 MB format it can't handle during booting, for some reason... but I can live with that; this revelation gives me so many more options than I had before! c",)

[+InsaneMultitasker]

The EPROM and rompage use the HFDC's on-board DSR, which is not capable of supporting the file system calculations to support 1.44MB.  Only the Geneve DSR is capable of this (and larger) capacities, and only MDOS 7.30 has ironed out the remaining known sector allocation/[calculation bugs. 

[Brufnus]

19 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

The EPROM and rompage use the HFDC's on-board DSR, which is not capable of supporting the file system calculations to support 1.44MB.  Only the Geneve DSR is capable of this (and larger) capacities, and only MDOS 7.30 has ironed out the remaining known sector allocation/[calculation bugs. 

Okay, so that's why. There are so much to learn about that Geneve, the HFDC and so on, and it's pretty fun.

By the way; I like that port number you have at the Heatwave BBS.... port 9640, ha ha