Bondwell B200

[Craig Comstock]

Just acquired a Bondwell B200 laptop. Seems to work but MS-DOS bootdisks
won't work (ha!) I guess it's a CPM machine, but not sure.

If anyone could point me in the direction of how to acquire CP/M systems
software or something that would get my Bondwell doing something besides
saying, "Non-system disk" That'd be great...

Any suggestions on other groups to post to?

Craig Comstock
come...@yahoo.com

[Don Maslin]

Craig Comstock (come...@yahoo.com) wrote:
: Just acquired a Bondwell B200 laptop. Seems to work but MS-DOS bootdisks

: Craig Comstock
: come...@yahoo.com

I have a CP/M-2.2 system disk for the Bondwell 2 laptop, but that's s
'fur piece' from 200! Frankly, though, that "Non-system disk" error
smacks an awful lot of DOS.
- don
do...@cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Web site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm

[dawa]

Craig wrote:

>Just acquired a Bondwell B200 laptop. Seems to work but MS-DOS bootdisks
>won't work (ha!) I guess it's a CPM machine, but not sure.

Hi Craig,

I have a B200 sat right here on my desk and I use it regularly as a portable
typing machine and for small-scale software development. I can confirm that it
is an XT class machine that is capable of running DOS. The basic specs for
the hardware are:

80C88 8MHz Processor
640K RAM
Two 720K 3.5" drives
10.5" LCD display, CGA Video
One printer port, IRQ ?, I/O address 378
One serial port, IRQ 4, I/O address 3F8, 16450 UART, 2400 baud, 8bits no
parity 1 stop bit

Please note that the disk drives are 720k capacity - they can't handle 1.44Mb
disks, only 720kb and 360kb - and I suspect that this is your problem. I
think you probably tried a 1.44Mb boot disk.

If you want to run DOS on it I suggest you get hold of Caldera DR-DOS from

http://www.caldera.com/products/drdos/index.html

and make sure you get hold of an installation pack specifically for 720k
disks.

Fortunately, most 1.44M drives can format, read, and write 720k disks so you
should be able to unpack the installation and copy the disk images onto
floppies using a standard desktop machine. Once you have done this the first
floppy in the set is a boot disk so you can try this disk in the B200.

After that you need to manually delete the files you don't need from this boot
disk and manually add the files that you do want. Caldera assume that you are
going to install DR-DOS onto a hard-drive and, of course, the B200 doesn't
have one so you will have to set up your boot floppy by hand. You can pick
the files for your system from the other disks in the installation pack and
copy exactly what you need onto your boot disk. Just remember that you only
have 720k, so choose carefully.

If you are not keen on DR-DOS you could just try formatting a floppy as 720k
and installing some other system files on it.

Once you get your machine booted you need software that will run on an XT.
You might like to try:

FLPKIT11.ZIP and FDFORM18.ZIP - to get better performance from floppy disks
DC-SK.ZIP - a great file manager for XT class machines
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/rlgreen/softlib1.htm - Free DOS Utilities page

I hope this helps
dawa

[sagec...@gmail.com]

I have a b200. Haven't used in a long time. I liked to run an 0s called GEO WORKS that did just fine once do was loaded. Took some disk swapping when you go from on program to another but I liked it