MicroDrive/Turbo and Z80 CP/M card

[Bobbi]

I installed a MicroDrive/Turbo in my //e yesterday. I wasn't able to get it working until I yanked by Z80 CP/M card. I guess this is not too surprising since the MicroDrive/Turbo uses DMA and the Z80 card also uses the DMA in order to take over the system bus.

Is there any way to have the MicroDrive/Turbo co-exist with a Z80 card, or should I just put my Z80 card in my ][+ and forget about it?

I tried turning off DMA in the MicroDrive settings and that seemed to improve things. However even with DMA disabled I can't boot a CP/M floppy, so there is not much point in keeping the Z80 card in the system at this point.

(Another reason why it is good to have more than one Apple II!)

[Tom Lake]

What CP/M card are you using? I was able to use the ALS CP/M Card (catchy name, that!) and Microsoft's Softcard IIe in my IIe Platinum with no problem. I used slot 5 for the ALS and 4 for Microsoft.

Tom L

[Bobbi Webber-Manners]

The CP/M card is a from SPAOE, whoever they were! I think it is pretty much
a generic clone of the Microsoft Softcard. It has the same four DIP switches.
It was installed in slot 4, and I hadn't thought to try it elsewhere (other
than another machine!) Is there any reason to suppose that moving it to a
different slot would change the behaviour in any way? I am rather ignorant
about how DMA works on the Apple II.

First posting with tin (via Proterm 3.1 on the //e), so hopefully it works!

[Tom Lake]

I guess it works since I'm answering it! :) Unfortunately I don't know how DMA works on the Apple II either. I didn't have to change any jumpers; I just plugged them in (one at a time!) and they worked. Switching slots is worth a shot! That's the one thing I don't like about the Apple II line. In an S-100 bus or ISA bus machine (as well as PCI and PCIe machines), any card can work in any slot it fits in and you don't need to know what slot your printer is in or your disk interface or anything. It's much easier to configure one of those than an Apple II.

Tom L

[Bobbi Webber-Manners]

There are pros and cons of doing it the Apple II way. It does make
configuration a little bit more painful, as you say. However it makes
the cards simpler, since they don't need (much) address decode logic.
With the Apple II way you don't get address conflicts between cards,
unlike the ISA PC bus for example .... anyhow, I digress!

[Anthony Adverse]

I too have a Clone Softcard, I had to move slots, to get it to work, I think it ended up in 5, but I didn't have to play with DMA at all. You can always try the MicroDrive in a different slot too, if you've got no printer slot 1 can be handy for that :)

A

[Bobbi]

Will have to give this a whirl on the weekend. It would be nice if they can coexist.

[Bobbi]

I tried a few things, based on the advice I found here: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/apple-ii-bus-irq-and-dma-priority (towards the bottom of the page)

I tried:
1) Z80 card in various slots.
2) Filling all slots with cards to make the sure DMA chain is unbroken.
3) Turning on switch 1-2 on the Z80 card which is supposed to make it respect the DMA IN line.

None of this made any difference. The status quo is that the Microdrive works fine with the Z80 card in the system, but I can't boot a CP/M floppy. It either hangs, repeatedly prints ERRERRERRERR or displays a corrupted lo-res screen.

The only thing I have not yet tried is the Microdrive in any slot other than 7.

I think the CP/M floppy I am using expects the card to be in slot 4 or 5, or else it prints COULDN'T FIND STUPID CARD on boot :)

Any bright ideas?

[Anthony Adverse]

What CP/M version do you have? I don't do anything much with mine, all I have is a single boot disk and that's it. But I'll check the version. Otherwise I'd say move the MD out of slot 7 still...

[Bobbi]

I think it is a Microsoft CP/M 2.23 (with 63K TPA). I can download others from Asimov though ...

Never got CPAM working with this card.

[Anthony Adverse]

I just had another thought, I think I had the MD in slot 5, and a floppy controller in 6 still, with the CP/M card in 4... I'll have to get CloneE out for a go, he's been on holiday.

A

[Bobbi]

On Saturday, 24 August 2019 02:39:39 UTC-4, Anthony Adverse wrote:
> I just had another thought, I think I had the MD in slot 5, and a floppy controller in 6 still, with the CP/M card in 4... I'll have to get CloneE out for a go, he's been on holiday.
>
> A

Only drawback with that is that the highest slot gets boot priority, and I would sooner that were the Microdrive.

[Anthony Adverse]

Alrighty then, I have....

Slot 1 Clock
Slot 2 Empty
Slot 3 512k Ramworks Clone
Slot 4 Z80
Slot 5 Disk II
Slot 6 Disk II
Slot 7 MicroDrive Turbo

The cpm version I have is Lingo 128 cp/m
56k Version 2.20B
August 1983

All running, not that I can access the MD while the Z80 is in action, and unfortunately my MD has been exclusively in my GS so its not unilaterally bootable at this point.

A

[Bobbi]

Right now I have:
Slot 1 - Parallel
Slot 2 - Super Serial
Slot 3 - Empty
Slot 4 - Z80 (SPAOE)
Slot 5 - Empty or Disk II
Slot 6 - Disk II
Slot 7 - Microdrive/Turbo

And Ext-80 col in the aux slot.

[Anthony Adverse]

Just for reference I also have an Applied Engineering CP/M which will not boot with that configuration. It starts but keeps re-reading 1 track.

Apple ][ CP/M
44k Ver 4.0B
1985 (Actually might have a corrupt floppy still checking)
No configuration I have will boot this floppy, and it displays rubbish on the screen after initial boot, but its also configured to look for some kind of RAMcard to install as a RAMdrive.

[Bobbi]

By the way Anthony .. does your Z80 card have DIP switches, and if so, how are they set? The MS Softcard has a bank of four switches and many of the clones replicate this (even though three of the four switches are useless since CP/M can't run unless they are set appropriately.)

[Anthony Adverse]

Softcard CP/M
60k v2.23
Microsoft
1982

Will also boot with the fully loaded configuration. This is the boot system for a WP disk I have. Thats the fully extent of my CP/M library.

[Bobbi]

I think I have that v2.23 60K TPA version too. I may just break out a new box of floppy disks and download a bunch off Asimov to play with. See if there is one that will allow more freedom to move the Z80 to a slot other than 4 or 5.

Also I may experiment some more with turning off DMA on the Microdrive. Right now it is turned on.

[Anthony Adverse]

No dip switches... the block is there but nothing installed. For all intents my card is this http://pineapple.zapto.org/hardware/display.php?query=225 with the jumper block removed, or if you like all switches turned off :)

[Steven Hirsch]

On 8/24/19 2:35 AM, Bobbi wrote:
> I think it is a Microsoft CP/M 2.23 (with 63K TPA). I can download others
> from Asimov though ...
>
> Never got CPAM working with this card.
>

If CP/AM won't work there's probably something out of spec or misbehaving on
the card. I wrote the 5.x versions of CP/AM and there's nothing AE-specific
about interface with hardware.

[Bobbi]

I didn't persist for long with any of the images from Asimov, and it was a few years ago, so I guess I will give it another whirl! Does CP/AM make any assumptions about which slot the card is in?

[Bobbi]

Incidentally, my SPAOE Z80 Card looks identical in layout to the Pineapple one Anthony posted a pic of yesterday. Looks to be a complete clone of the real Softcard.

Success!! I managed to get CP/M booting with the Microdrive in slot 7. My setup is Microdrive in slot 7, DIsk II in slot 6, slot 5 is empty, slot 4 is the Z80 card. Also have a SSC in Slot 2 and Apple Parallel in Slot 1.

I got DATASOFT CP/M 2.23B to boot (63K TPA). I had to make a new new floppy. It seems my old CP/M boot floppy got chewed up somehow in the process of experimenting with this. Also my Z80 card is a bit flakey. The breakthrough was when I touched it while it was plugged and and powered on and suddenly the text screen filled with garbage. After that is seems to work, so I guess there is a dodgy joint on it somewhere. Anyhow ... working!!!!!

Going to go try me some CP/AM now, and see if that works!! I will probably be back with questions :)

[Bobbi]

And CP/AM 5.1.1 is running too!! The copy I downloaded a while back must have been bad. I am wondering if the CP/AM support for the Sider drive could work with the MicroDrive/Turbo, but it is probably not worth the hassle.

[Anthony Adverse]

You could always get a second CF card for the CP/M I keep meaning to get another card. I have a cable to jumper lead it outside the case, for quick swap. I was going to try a few hard drives too. But seeing as it ended up in the GS which came along afterwards it kind of went well onto the back burner. If I could afford another MDT I'd probably have go.. but my pockets aren't very deep :/

[Anthony Adverse]

> Incidentally, my SPAOE Z80 Card looks identical in layout to the Pineapple one Anthony posted a pic of yesterday. Looks to be a complete clone of the real Softcard.
>

http://pineapple.zapto.org/hardware/display.php?query=193
The SPAOE card

http://pineapple.zapto.org/hardware/display.php?query=225
generic Soft Card clone

[Bobbi]

The picture of the SPAOE card matches mine exactly. It seems to be running CP/AM 5.1.1 without any trouble.

Interestingly the Applied Engineering PC.COM utility can see the four partitions I have on the MicroDrive, but I am not sure what I would have to do to actually use a partition with CP/M. The instructions in the manual are written for the Sider, and it is not too obvious how to adapt this, if it is even feasible.

[Steven Hirsch]

No

[Steven Hirsch]

On 8/24/19 6:18 PM, Bobbi wrote:

> Success!! I managed to get CP/M booting with the Microdrive in slot 7. My
> setup is Microdrive in slot 7, DIsk II in slot 6, slot 5 is empty, slot 4
> is the Z80 card. Also have a SSC in Slot 2 and Apple Parallel in Slot 1.
>
> I got DATASOFT CP/M 2.23B to boot (63K TPA). I had to make a new new
> floppy.

What is 'DATASOFT' CP/M? Is this a modified version of Microsoft 2.23? If
so, where can I grab an image?

[Steven Hirsch]

On 8/24/19 7:29 PM, Bobbi wrote:
>
> And CP/AM 5.1.1 is running too!! The copy I downloaded a while back must
> have been bad. I am wondering if the CP/AM support for the Sider drive
> could work with the MicroDrive/Turbo, but it is probably not worth the
> hassle.

Sider support was highly specific to the First Class Peripherals slot ROM and
Sider partitioning scheme. I think the chances of this working are
effectively zero.

[Steven Hirsch]

That's interesting. PC.COM was developed around a VERY early SmartPort
specification and was intended to support the original Unidisk 3.5. I don't
think there's any ability to adjust CP/M disk parameters to arbitrary volume
sizes. The source code found its way into the world years ago, so perhaps
someone will code support in for their own edification (won't be me, before
you get your hopes up).

[Bobbi]

Hi Steven -- Thanks for the info on the Sider support. I don't think I am going to try that. There are some DOS 3.3 files on side B of the CPAM diskette that are supposed to be run before PC.COM is run under CP/AM, but the manual doesn't really give much idea what this program actually does. At least part of it is in Applesoft, but I didn't work out much from quickly looking at it. It does a bunch of mysterious POKEs.

If someone was suitably motivated (not me either!) then it looks like there is some hope of getting something working, but I would be amazed if anything worked 'out of the box'.

The DATASOFT CP/M was a CPM-2.23 image I downloaded from Asimov. I don't really know anything about its origin, but it appears to be have all the same files as Microsoft Softcard CP/M 2.23 - MBASIC, GBASIC etc. I am not using it for any special reason, other than I downloaded it and it seems to work ok :)

Anyhow I am happy to have CP/M running again, and CP/AM seems to have some nice enhancements, so thank you for that!!

[Steven Hirsch]

On 8/25/19 1:31 PM, Bobbi wrote:

> Hi Steven -- Thanks for the info on the Sider support. I don't think I am
> going to try that. There are some DOS 3.3 files on side B of the CPAM
> diskette that are supposed to be run before PC.COM is run under CP/AM, but
> the manual doesn't really give much idea what this program actually does.
> At least part of it is in Applesoft, but I didn't work out much from
> quickly looking at it. It does a bunch of mysterious POKEs.

I don't recall having written a line of Applesoft BASIC code in my life, so no
idea what that might be for, nor who developed it.

[Anthony Adverse]

yer edjumacations bin neglected there...

[Steven Hirsch]

I always felt like something was missing from my life... Perhaps that's it? :-)

[Michael J. Mahon]

It _is_ a remarkable experience to switch on a computer and immediately
type in a program and run it—no OS, no problem!

--
-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://michaeljmahon.com