Using DOSBox to run CP/M-86 on modern hardware
Tom Anderson
I haven't posted here for a while, but I thought I'd ask if anyone else is
doing this. I downloaded DOSBox to run old games on my XP box, the discovered
that it can boot other operating systems from disk images. I decided to try
booting CP/M-86 v. 1.1 and it worked. I have a screenshot posted at:
http://www.skypoint.com/members/ande1054/dos-box-144cpm86a.jpg
DOSBox can map serial port 0 to a tcp port so I can communicate with other
computers on my LAN. File transfers are possible, but unreliable. I have been
able to send uuencoded files by dumping them to the screen in my telnet
terminal prog, and capturing them on the CP/M-86 side, using the Modem9 text
capture feature.
My XP box doesn't have any serial ports, so I think I'm going to have to get a
USB to serial adapter, and try connecting directly to my old 386 that has a
CP/M-86 partition on it, and see if Move-IT will work.
Anyway, it's kind of fun to experiment with.
Tom Anderson
s100guy
Anderson) wrote:
> Hi.
..... *snip*
> My XP box doesn't have any serial ports, so I think I'm going to have to get a
> USB to serial adapter, and try connecting directly to my old 386 that has a
> CP/M-86 partition on it, and see if Move-IT will work.
>
> Anyway, it's kind of fun to experiment with.
>
> Tom Anderson
Hi Tom --
Deal Extreme sells a USB to serial adapter for a few bucks that works
pretty well. Most of my old, and new, CP/M boxes use a serial port as
the console, and when I upgraded to a new desktop system ... SURPRISE
-- no legacy type serial ports. I'm a Linux user (primarily), so I
was worried about these things working with it. Hah! Worked like a
charm. As soon as I plugged it in, /dev/ttyUSB0 got created, and that
was the device to use with the terminal emulator (minicom). Get on
www.DealExtreme.com and search for "USB to serial adapter". I don't
have any part numbers, but it has a bluish-green plastic shell with
USB at one end and DB-9 at the other. It costs $4 or something like
that. For the Micro$lop users out there, they supply a set of drivers
on a micro-CD. Very cool!
BTW, I have no connection to Deal Extreme other than being a satisfied
customer.
Roger
All...@localhost.net
<rzh_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Dec 24, 12:13�pm, ande1054-remo...@mirage.skypoint.com (Tom
>Anderson) wrote:
>> Hi.
>..... *snip*
>> My XP box doesn't have any serial ports, so I think I'm going to have to get a
>> USB to serial adapter, and try connecting directly to my old 386 that has a
>> CP/M-86 partition on it, and see if Move-IT will work.
>>
>> Anyway, it's kind of fun to experiment with.
>>
>> Tom Anderson
>
Despite the following response you do have a problem.
CP/M-86 as suppled has no USB driver in the BIOS. It could
be added but it takes a bit of code to do it. So out of the box
CP/M-86 requires an actual serial port.
I keep older boxes for that reason as the newest and faster
often has none of the legacy IO I need.
Allison
Tarkin
> On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:46:06 -0800 (PST), s100guy
>
> >have any part numbers, but it has a bluish-green plastic shell with
> >USB at one end and DB-9 at the other. It costs $4 or something like
> >that. For the Micro$lop users out there, they supply a set of drivers
> >on a micro-CD. Very cool!
>
> >BTW, I have no connection to Deal Extreme other than being a satisfied
> >customer.
>
> >Roger
>
>
He might not have a problem; I had an issue where TeraTerm wouldn't
use
com ports above com4, but my USB-to-serial adapter showed as com5.
The prolific driver allowed me to re-map it's com number to 2, which
had no physical counterpart on my box.
So, what does have to with the price of silicon in Chiba? IFF the DOS
sandbox and/or HAL provided by XP properly abstracts the com port,
CP/M-86 may believe that it is in fact dealing with a serial port.
I don't believe TeraTerm noticed the difference.
It will be interesting to see what happens...
TTFN,
Tarkin
Freek
news:buadnfw4j90cVq7W...@skypoint.com...
Nice to see my 1.44 MB software for CP/M-86 working in this Dosbox
environment!
I'll try to find some time to test it myself. Lately, I haven't been too
succesful in running the real CP/M-86 on a recent multicore pentium machine.
I prefer running CP/M-86 natively, but maybe I should switch to this Dosbox
program.
Have fun,
Freek.
Tom Anderson
says...
>
>On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:46:06 -0800 (PST), s100guy
><rzh_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On Dec 24, 12:13�pm, ande1054-remo...@mirage.skypoint.com (Tom
>>Anderson) wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>..... *snip*
>>> My XP box doesn't have any serial ports, so I think I'm going to have to
ge
>t a
>>> USB to serial adapter, and try connecting directly to my old 386 that has
a
>>> CP/M-86 partition on it, and see if Move-IT will work.
>>>
>>> Anyway, it's kind of fun to experiment with.
>>>
>>> Tom Anderson
>>
>
>Despite the following response you do have a problem.
>CP/M-86 as suppled has no USB driver in the BIOS. It could
>be added but it takes a bit of code to do it. So out of the box
>CP/M-86 requires an actual serial port.
>
>I keep older boxes for that reason as the newest and faster
>often has none of the legacy IO I need.
>
>Allison
>
I probably wasn't clear on the serial port issue. DOSBox takes care of all
that. CP/M-86 thinks it's running on a real 486 with real serial ports, even
though my XP box has no real serial ports. DOSBox redirects the serial output
to TCP port 23. I can communicate with a telnet server on another computer on
my LAN. Over the holiday break, I put a copy of Telix, (an old DOS comm prog)
on my WIN98 box. Telix can use a fossil driver (RLFossil.exe) to redirect the
serial output of the comm program to a TCP port (23). Now the Win98 box booted
to real DOS, and running Telix, can talk to the XP machine, which is running
DOSBox booted to CP/M-86. I can transfer files between the two by uuencoding
them and doing an ASCII upload from Telix, and using "PIP filename.typ=AXI:"
on the CP/M side. For some reason, Xmodem transfers using modem9.cmd don't
work.
I haven't tried it yet, but I think that a USB to serial adapter would allow
me to connect to my old Everex 386 through a null modem cable.
One advantage to all this is that I can boot a CP/M-86 disk image, transfer
files to the image, write the image to a floppy, and boot a real computer with
the floppy. Another advantage is that I can use CP/M-86 without dragging out
the old hardware. The main point of it all, however, was just to see if it
could be done. :)
Tom Anderson
Tom Anderson
I am having fun. :) The 1.44 MB software is a great thing to have. Those 320
KB disks don't hold much.
Thank You.
Tom Anderson
Steve Nickolas
It's good that DOSBOX can succeed where QEMU fails, e.g., DOSPLUS (including
the John Elliott tweaks) fails horribly on qemu, but it works gread on
DOSBOX, and that snags you DOS compatibility *and* CP/M-86.
I wonder why it fails on qemu, though.
-uso.
Roy
QEMU will check 55AA signature in 0x1FE-0x1FF. You can use -no-fd-
bootchk to disable checking of 55AA signature.
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/9176/cpm8611qemu.png
Steve Nickolas
I'm not talking about that.
It loads the kernel, the kernel starts, and then it just says "Not ready
reading drive A:, Abort/Retry?"
-uso.
Roy
Where did you get the disk image?
And which version of QEMU did you use?
I use QEMU 0.12.2 and 144cpm86.zip from gaby.de.
programs with screen control codes freezes in older versions(<0.12) of
QEMU but it will boot and go to prompt and DIR/DDT86/PIP will work.
Roy
Steve Nickolas
> Where did you get the disk image?
> And which version of QEMU did you use?
It's John Elliott's patched XIOS (but CDOS386 fails the same way). Up to
0.11.91.
-uso.
Roy
Did you use an 1228800 or 368640 bytes image to hold a 320KB image
content?
I tested cpm86-bt.zip with 320KB image and it works fine.
Steve Nickolas
I used a 1.44 MB image to hold a 1.44 MB image content. It works on Bochs
and DOSBOX.
-uso.
Roy
May I have your image please?
I'd like to test with my QEMU collections.
BTW DOSBox and ScriptPC do better job for CP/M-86 family. They boot
Personal CP/M-86 2.0/2 while QEMU doesn't.
Roy
Roy
I finally got that you mean is DOSPlus.
for both 1.2-je5 and 2.1-je5 won't boot on QEMU > 0.5. And QEMU 0.5
*does* boot both of them.
Roy
Roy
And I filed as a regression bug.
http://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-...@nongnu.org/msg25743.html
Roy
Roy
for PCPM-86 2.0, QEMU < 0.10 with old Bochs BIOS (2004-07-11) boots.
lupo...@gmail.com
Is your version a specially modified version? Do you have the source code for your version? How do you run it from within DOSBox? I can be reached at: lupo...@cox.net