Does anyone have a disk image for SCP 86DOS?

Bill

"Robert J. Stevens" wrote in message
news:CrqdnSrb3Kwxv5LVnZ2dnUVZ_ovinZ2d@choiceonecom munications...
> Has anyone been able to get SCP's 86-Dos Running on any Machine at all
> TIA
> Bob in Wisconsin
> USE
> trebor72@execpc.com

If a disk image for 86DOS is available, then it should be possible to
get it running in SIMH/AltairZ80. We need to know what disk
controller the disk image expects, and then implement it in the
simulator. I already did CompuPro DISK1A (765-based) and several
others (Vector, N*, etc.) If it runs on a Cromemco controller (as I
think I heard somewhere) then the thing to do would be simulate the
179x and the rest of the Cromemco specifics, and get RDOS or Cromemco
CP/M working to verify the simulated hardware.

That's how I got MDOS and OASIS running. Since I didn't know anything
about those OS, I started by getting CP/M to run on the simulated
hardware, and then moved to the new OS. It's much easier to debug the
software in simulation than in real hardware...

If an 86-DOS disk image can be made (in any file format, but ImageDisk
(IMD) preferred) then rhis is all doable. I figured out the Vector
skew, etc, by looking at text files in the disk image, and writing a
small program to "fix" the skew (ie, get to 1:1) and then re-skew them
to the original. This was necessary because the images I had were
made with Dave Dunfield's CPT program running on a different version
of CP/M than the original disk was made with, and they had different
skews. So the disk image files were essentially double-skewed, which
made no sense, but was fixable after some exploration using a HEX
editor.

Also, to get it working in simulation, as long as we have the disk
controller ROM, or ROM Monitor with the bootstrap, then it is easy to
figure out where the system tracks are. Turning on some debugging
output in SIMH will show the disk seeking and sector reads. Once the
ROM bootstrap loads the secondary bootstrap off the disk, then that
can be disassembled to see what it does.

Once 86-DOS is working in simulation, you can build a "real" system
with the appropriate hardware, write a working disk image back to an
8" floppy using ImageDisk, and then it should come up on the real
hardware. If you don't have the correct real hardware, then 86-DOS
can be patched using the simulator, and run on the hardware you have.
I'd say the disk controller would have to match, but other stuff like
memory and console I/O should be easily patchable. One nice thing
about the simulator is that you can set it up to halt on unhandled I/O
accesses, so it is easy to figure out where the code is that does I/O
and modify it as necessary.

On Apr 25, 5:22*am, "datapackrat" wrote:
> Does anyone have a disk image for SCP 86DOS?
>
> Bill
>
> "Robert J. Stevens" wrote in messagenews:CrqdnSrb3Kwxv5LVnZ2dnUVZ_ovinZ2d@choic eonecommunications...
>
>
>
> > Has anyone been able to get SCP's 86-Dos Running on any Machine at all
> > TIA
> > Bob in Wisconsin
> > USE
> > trebo...@execpc.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
> If a disk image for 86DOS is available, then it should be possible to
> get it running in SIMH/AltairZ80.

Have you added 8086 support to SIMH?
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Apr 26, 11:07*am, Al Kossow wrote:
> hha...@hartetec.com wrote:
> > If a disk image for 86DOS is available, then it should be possible to
> > get it running in SIMH/AltairZ80.
>
> Have you added 8086 support to SIMH?
> ** Posted fromhttp://www.teranews.com**

I didn't, but Peter Schorn did. Using the CompuPro hardware
simulation (DISK1A, DISK2, Selector Channel, MDRIVE-H), it is possible
to boot CompuPro CP/M-86 on it (as well as, of course, CP/M 2.2.) The
System Support board simulation is not complete (ie, no RTC, etc) but
it is good enough to use for a console.

I got CP/M 2.2 working, then Peter added the 8086, and modelled it
after the CompuPro CPU8085/8088, and got CP/M-86 to work. The DISK1A
has bootstraps for 8085, 8088, and 68000 in ROM, and the same ROM
image is used in the DISK1A simulation.

-Howard

30 years ago.

But I still have everything .... all hardware and software components,
stuff I originally bought from SCP in 1980 or so .... I believe that I
could get it running with about 10-20 hours of work, and if things went
"well" (nah, would never happen) maybe as little as 3-4 hours of work.

Robert J. Stevens wrote:
> Has anyone been able to get SCP's 86-Dos Running on any Machine at all
> TIA
> Bob in Wisconsin
> USE
> trebor72@execpc.com

Disk image? How about original disks. All of them, virtually every
version from 0.33 to 2.0

Good? Who know, but probably (all of my other well stored 8" disks are
still readable).

I've had thoughts of selling them on E-Bay. How much do you think they
are worth?


datapackrat wrote:
> Does anyone have a disk image for SCP 86DOS?
>
> Bill
>
> "Robert J. Stevens" wrote in message
> news:CrqdnSrb3Kwxv5LVnZ2dnUVZ_ovinZ2d@choiceonecom munications...
>> Has anyone been able to get SCP's 86-Dos Running on any Machine at all
>> TIA
>> Bob in Wisconsin
>> USE
>> trebor72@execpc.com
>
>

For a fact, there were distributions of 86DOS that supported the Tarbell
Double Density controller. I believe that the CompuPro Disk 1 and the
Cromemco 16FDC were also supported.

hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
> If a disk image for 86DOS is available, then it should be possible to
> get it running in SIMH/AltairZ80. We need to know what disk
> controller the disk image expects, and then implement it in the
> simulator. I already did CompuPro DISK1A (765-based) and several
> others (Vector, N*, etc.) If it runs on a Cromemco controller (as I
> think I heard somewhere) then the thing to do would be simulate the
> 179x and the rest of the Cromemco specifics, and get RDOS or Cromemco
> CP/M working to verify the simulated hardware.
>
> That's how I got MDOS and OASIS running. Since I didn't know anything
> about those OS, I started by getting CP/M to run on the simulated
> hardware, and then moved to the new OS. It's much easier to debug the
> software in simulation than in real hardware...
>
> If an 86-DOS disk image can be made (in any file format, but ImageDisk
> (IMD) preferred) then rhis is all doable. I figured out the Vector
> skew, etc, by looking at text files in the disk image, and writing a
> small program to "fix" the skew (ie, get to 1:1) and then re-skew them
> to the original. This was necessary because the images I had were
> made with Dave Dunfield's CPT program running on a different version
> of CP/M than the original disk was made with, and they had different
> skews. So the disk image files were essentially double-skewed, which
> made no sense, but was fixable after some exploration using a HEX
> editor.
>
> Also, to get it working in simulation, as long as we have the disk
> controller ROM, or ROM Monitor with the bootstrap, then it is easy to
> figure out where the system tracks are. Turning on some debugging
> output in SIMH will show the disk seeking and sector reads. Once the
> ROM bootstrap loads the secondary bootstrap off the disk, then that
> can be disassembled to see what it does.
>
> Once 86-DOS is working in simulation, you can build a "real" system
> with the appropriate hardware, write a working disk image back to an
> 8" floppy using ImageDisk, and then it should come up on the real
> hardware. If you don't have the correct real hardware, then 86-DOS
> can be patched using the simulator, and run on the hardware you have.
> I'd say the disk controller would have to match, but other stuff like
> memory and console I/O should be easily patchable. One nice thing
> about the simulator is that you can set it up to halt on unhandled I/O
> accesses, so it is easy to figure out where the code is that does I/O
> and modify it as necessary.
>
> On Apr 25, 5:22 am, "datapackrat" wrote:
>> Does anyone have a disk image for SCP 86DOS?
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> "Robert J. Stevens" wrote in messagenews:CrqdnSrb3Kwxv5LVnZ2dnUVZ_ovinZ2d@choic eonecommunications...
>>
>>
>>
>>> Has anyone been able to get SCP's 86-Dos Running on any Machine at all
>>> TIA
>>> Bob in Wisconsin
>>> USE
>>> trebo...@execpc.com- Hide quoted text -
>> - Show quoted text -
>

For 86-DOS, you would need to simulate the SCP "CPU SUPPORT BOARD"; it's
similar, in many ways (e.g. has things like 8259's), to the CompuPro
System Support board, but it's not the same.

I used to run 86-DOS on a system whose CPU card was the CompuPro
8085/8088 card with the SCP CPU support board (I had a custom firmware
ROM that I no longer have to handle startup CPU and OS selection).


hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
> On Apr 26, 11:07 am, Al Kossow wrote:
>> hha...@hartetec.com wrote:
>>> If a disk image for 86DOS is available, then it should be possible to
>>> get it running in SIMH/AltairZ80.
>> Have you added 8086 support to SIMH?
>> ** Posted fromhttp://www.teranews.com**
>
> I didn't, but Peter Schorn did. Using the CompuPro hardware
> simulation (DISK1A, DISK2, Selector Channel, MDRIVE-H), it is possible
> to boot CompuPro CP/M-86 on it (as well as, of course, CP/M 2.2.) The
> System Support board simulation is not complete (ie, no RTC, etc) but
> it is good enough to use for a console.
>
> I got CP/M 2.2 working, then Peter added the 8086, and modelled it
> after the CompuPro CPU8085/8088, and got CP/M-86 to work. The DISK1A
> has bootstraps for 8085, 8088, and 68000 in ROM, and the same ROM
> image is used in the DISK1A simulation.
>
> -Howard

On Apr 26, 8:01*pm, Barry Watzman wrote:
> For 86-DOS, you would need to simulate the SCP "CPU SUPPORT BOARD"; it's
> similar, in many ways (e.g. has things like 8259's), to the CompuPro
> System Support board, but it's not the same.
>
> I used to run 86-DOS on a system whose CPU card was the CompuPro
> 8085/8088 card with the SCP CPU support board (I had a custom firmware
> ROM that I no longer have to handle startup CPU and OS selection).
>

Thnks to you Barry, the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and
on-line. The CPU Support Board can have an EPROM on-board, so it
would be nice to read the EPROM from a real board. Which disk
controller do your disks support?

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:44:05 -0700 (PDT), "hharte@hartetec.com"
wrote:

>Thnks to you Barry, the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and
>on-line.

Where?

Is this a new scan, or the same one posted maybe 4-5 years ago?

Also - I use Firefox. When I put the mouse over links on your website,
about half of them point to your local hard drive, not your URL. Of
course, if one knows to grab the tail end and paste....but that's not
a common skill, I've found. So.....Voice Operated Joy Stick?

What you want to know about BIOSes?

Would you happen to have a complete text-file list of Phoenix
functions, even better some way to figure out which ones are
present in a given implementation? They don't always seem to
be in the same place/order.

Bill

On Apr 29, 8:20*am, Bill wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:44:05 -0700 (PDT), "hha...@hartetec.com"
>
> wrote:
> >Thnks to you Barry, the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and
> >on-line.
>
> Where?
>
> Is this a new scan, or the same one posted maybe 4-5 years ago?
>
> Also - I use Firefox. When I put the mouse over links on your website,
> about half of them point to your local hard drive, not your URL. Of
> course, if one knows to grab the tail end and paste....but that's not
> a common skill, I've found. So.....Voice Operated Joy Stick?
>
> What you want to know about BIOSes?
>
> Would you happen to have a complete text-file list of Phoenix
> functions, even better some way to figure out which ones are
> present in a given implementation? They don't always seem to
> be in the same place/order.
>
> Bill

The manual is the one Barry scanned about four years ago:

http://www.hartetechnologies.com/man...rt%20Board.pdf

Given that the manual is almost 30 years old, and probably hasn't been
revised lately, the scan is probably still good. I don't know much
about modern BIOSes, but the source for the IBM PC BIOS is in the IBM
Technical Reference Manual.

hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
> On Apr 29, 8:20 am, Bill wrote:
>
>
> snipped I don't know much
> about modern BIOSes, but the source for the IBM PC BIOS is in the IBM
> Technical Reference Manual.
>
Does anyone have a scan of the Manual.
I would like to get the Listing for the IBM PC BIOS
Also interested in where on the floppy the BIOS is stored on the early
Implementations of 86-DOS and SCP-DOS and MS-DOS2.0
TIA
Bob in Wisconsin

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:49:57 -0500, "Robert J. Stevens"
wrote:

re: IBM PC BIOS is in the IBM Technical Reference Manual.

>Does anyone have a scan of the Manual.
>I would like to get the Listing for the IBM PC BIOS
>Also interested in where on the floppy the BIOS is stored on the early
>Implementations of 86-DOS and SCP-DOS and MS-DOS2.0

That would be two DIFFERENT concepts of BIOS

The first one referenced, ie the IBM PC BIOS, is stored in a ROM
in much the same way most early CP/M machines handled the
job of presenting some way to interface to CP/M - putting the
basic hardware handling routines into a piece of hardware.

CP/M then used a CBIOS (Customized/Customizable BIOS) to
interface to the actual hardware, with this piece living on disk.

I know CP/M-86 used something similar, but can't say for sure
about the others. Maybe it's buried inside something else -
MSDOS.SYS is too small, maybe somewhere in COMMAND.COM?

Also, the degree of compatability is far higher among ms dos
computers than was the case with earlier CP/M ones.

Time to dig up a pointer to WIM's BIOS Pages.......

Here ya'll go... http://www.wimsbios.com/index.jsp

Bill

Bill wrote:
: That would be two DIFFERENT concepts of BIOS

: The first one referenced, ie the IBM PC BIOS, is stored in a ROM
: in much the same way most early CP/M machines handled the
: job of presenting some way to interface to CP/M - putting the
: basic hardware handling routines into a piece of hardware.

: CP/M then used a CBIOS (Customized/Customizable BIOS) to
: interface to the actual hardware, with this piece living on disk.

: I know CP/M-86 used something similar, but can't say for sure
: about the others.

MS-DOS (up to version 6) and PC-DOS use a similar structure - MSDOS.SYS /
IBMDOS.COM roughly corresponds to the BDOS, and IO.SYS / IBMBIO.COM to the
CBIOS. On a PC-compatible IO.SYS/IBMBIO.COM calls down to the ROM BIOS, but
it doesn't have to be that way. Implementations of MS-DOS exist (eg, for the
Apricot PC, or the Sanyo MBC-550) where the ROM is only used for booting,
and after that all the I/O is handled by IO.SYS, which bangs on the hardware
directly.

For ease of disambiguation, it may be as well to do like Amstrad and refer
to the software in the boot ROM as the ROS (ROM operating system) rather
than the BIOS.

--
John Elliott

Thinks: This is what a nice clean life leads to. Hmm, why did I ever lead one?
-- Bluebottle, in the Goon Show

On Thu, 1 May 2008 00:19:18 +0100, John Elliott
wrote:

> For ease of disambiguation, it may be as well to do like Amstrad and refer
>to the software in the boot ROM as the ROS (ROM operating system) rather
>than the BIOS.

Just changing the subject a little further off kilter ...

wondering...has anyone here used the Linux ROM
bootloader approach? IE, there's a Linux variant that
puts almost nothing in the system ROM save for some
sort of bootloader (but I think it can be EVERY possible
bootable device) which then loads and intializes, among
other things, CPU and support chip registers normally
done from ROM. They claim boots in a couple seconds.

No more ROM programming (and virus/trojan flashes)
Everything is software ... files in/on your boot device.

The other thing we really need is non-alterable by
miscreants (virus writers) boot devices like CD

Even if something got into your 'soft' and writable
storage device(s), you could always start with a
clean, non-infected boot. Is it really that hard to do?

Several times now I've been hit, and simply stuff in
a Knopix CD, to repair enough damage to get my
ancient LitePC/Win98/hacked system running again.
Did I mention, it usually boots in under 15 seconds,
and shuts down in under three?

Bill

Re: "the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and on-line"

Indeed; I believe I was the one who scanned it.

The disks that I have are for the Tarbell double density board, but I
believe that the CompuPro Disk 1 and the Cromemco 16FDC were also
offered, and possibly [likely] others.

It's possible that there was a listing of the ROM monitor that was in
the CPU support card in some of the SCP documentation (in fact I'm
pretty sure that there was, because I modified it, which means that I
had source code). If so, I probably have it .... somewhere. [Actually,
I think that the source code may have been on the 86-DOS distribution
disks.]



hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
> On Apr 26, 8:01 pm, Barry Watzman wrote:
>> For 86-DOS, you would need to simulate the SCP "CPU SUPPORT BOARD"; it's
>> similar, in many ways (e.g. has things like 8259's), to the CompuPro
>> System Support board, but it's not the same.
>>
>> I used to run 86-DOS on a system whose CPU card was the CompuPro
>> 8085/8088 card with the SCP CPU support board (I had a custom firmware
>> ROM that I no longer have to handle startup CPU and OS selection).
>>
>
> Thnks to you Barry, the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and
> on-line. The CPU Support Board can have an EPROM on-board, so it
> would be nice to read the EPROM from a real board. Which disk
> controller do your disks support?

I scanned it from the original manual (which I still have) and I believe
that I gave it to Howard Harte to post about 4 years ago.


Bill wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:44:05 -0700 (PDT), "hharte@hartetec.com"
> wrote:
>
>> Thnks to you Barry, the SCP "CPU Support Board" manual is scanned and
>> on-line.
>
> Where?
>
> Is this a new scan, or the same one posted maybe 4-5 years ago?
>
> Also - I use Firefox. When I put the mouse over links on your website,
> about half of them point to your local hard drive, not your URL. Of
> course, if one knows to grab the tail end and paste....but that's not
> a common skill, I've found. So.....Voice Operated Joy Stick?
>
> What you want to know about BIOSes?
>
> Would you happen to have a complete text-file list of Phoenix
> functions, even better some way to figure out which ones are
> present in a given implementation? They don't always seem to
> be in the same place/order.
>
> Bill

A lot of different things are being confused here.

86-DOS did not run on a PC, it ran on S-100 systems. So any references
to "BIOS" would be to a disk-based BIOS, not to a ROM bios (on a PC or
any other machine, although there would likely be some type of "boot
code" in any machine).

Conversely, on a PC, there is a BIOS on the motherboard, and the
listings of that for the IBM-PC, PC-XT and PC-AT were published by IBM
and are in the manuals. I would assume (but don't know for a fact) that
you can find those online, but they won't help you with 86-DOS, in fact
they are completely irrelevant.


Robert J. Stevens wrote:
> hharte@hartetec.com wrote:
>> On Apr 29, 8:20 am, Bill wrote:
>>
>> snipped I don't know much
>> about modern BIOSes, but the source for the IBM PC BIOS is in the IBM
>> Technical Reference Manual.
>>
> Does anyone have a scan of the Manual.
> I would like to get the Listing for the IBM PC BIOS
> Also interested in where on the floppy the BIOS is stored on the early
> Implementations of 86-DOS and SCP-DOS and MS-DOS2.0
> TIA
> Bob in Wisconsin

On Apr 30, 10:26*pm, Barry Watzman wrote:
> A lot of different things are being confused here.
>
> 86-DOS did not run on a PC, it ran on S-100 systems. *So any references
> to "BIOS" would be to a disk-based BIOS, not to a ROM bios (on a PC or
> any other machine, although there would likely be some type of "boot
> code" in any machine).
>
> Conversely, on a PC, there is a BIOS on the motherboard, and the
> listings of that for the IBM-PC, PC-XT and PC-AT were published by IBM
> and are in the manuals. *I would assume (but don't know for a fact) that
> you can find those online, but they won't help you with 86-DOS, in fact
> they are completely irrelevant.
>
> Robert J. Stevens wrote:
> > hha...@hartetec.com wrote:
> >> On Apr 29, 8:20 am, Bill wrote:
>
> >> snipped I don't know much
> >> about modern BIOSes, but the source for the IBM PC BIOS is in the IBM
> >> Technical Reference Manual.
>
> > Does anyone have a scan of the Manual.
> > I would like to get the Listing for the IBM PC BIOS
> > Also interested in where on
the floppy the BIOS is stored on the early
> > Implementations of 86-DOS and SCP-DOS and MS-DOS2.0
> > TIA
> > Bob in Wisconsin

So, to simuulate 86-DOS in SIMH, we are missing a few things:

1. Most importantly, an 86-DOS disk image
2. The SCP ROM (probably not critical)
3. Tarbell CP/M disk image to get the simulated disk controller
working) also not critical, but would be extremely helpful.

Any volunteers to make an 86-DOS disk image using Dave Dunfield's
ImageDisk tools?

It is amazing to me that 86-DOS has not been run in simulation given
its historical significance.