Model 4P questions
Roger Taylor
to get something going on it to play around with.
Using David Keil's emulator, I managed to boot into TRSDOS 6.2 in Drive 0,
and a driver "FDD360K.DSK" in Drive 1, in an attempt to make a REAL TRS-80
floppy disk of the TRSDOS disk to be loaded on the real 4P.
I have tried my 1.2m 5.25" and my 360k 5.25", both will format fine from
TRSDOS... and report 40 tracks read back just fine.
Any attempt to BACKUP Drive 0 to Drive 1 aborts with the message "write
fault on drive" or something like that. Usually, one file is copied before
the abort, so I know I'm close, I just can't figure out what's going on. My
write protect is not enabled for David's Drive 1.
I just grabbed CopyCat which I am going to try while I'm hopefully gathering
some answers from kind folks here. Maybe it will work.
P.S. the write fault error occurs with both of my perfectly working 1.2m and
360k drives. My BIOS has Drive B: setup as 360k DSDD right now, and I'm
running the emulator from MSDOS or a Windows startup disk.
Doug & Lissa Thompson
you are booting the emulator with a single sided disk and that you have
the real floppy set up with FDD180K.DSK in order to create a disk that
will boot the 4P.
Your other choice is to replace the 2 floppies in the 4P with double
sided drives and adding a pin to the drive cable (1 pin for each floppy)
so enable the Side Select function (I think it goes in as pin 32).
lots of luck...real 4Ps are fantastic...I still have mine which I bought
in 1985....
Douggy T
Roger Taylor
Anyway, CopyCat has made me 3 floppies so far of TRSDOS62.DSK which will not
boot on the 4P, but...
With these emulator-made floppies, as SOON as the Drive 0 light comes on (on
the real 4P), the screen fills with repeated "A:"'s where the A has two dots
on top.
Thanks for the 180K tip. I'm off to work on this now.
"Doug & Lissa Thompson" <sa...@mts.net> wrote in message
news:3E6AD12...@mts.net...
Roger Taylor
driver files for David Keil's emulator.
Where can I find a 180K driver?
"Doug & Lissa Thompson" <sa...@mts.net> wrote in message
news:3E6AD12...@mts.net...
Vince Briel
are several things to try. First time I got one to work was on an old laser
386 with built in 1.2M floppy drive. Later I pulled out that floppy and
stuck it into a pentium 75 with built in floppy controller and it wouldn't
work! Your 360K floppy is your best bet for it working. I'd try and find
an Adaptec 1342 SCSI controller. It has built on floppy controller that
works great. You can find them in used computer stores or on eBay for about
$5. Make sure you are using DD floppies or it won't work. Also, after you
create it, make sure you can boot from it with the emulator.
Hope this helps.
Vince
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
news:hxucnc4yBey...@www.bayou.com...
Larry Fosdick
| P.S. I have looked and cannot find the "FDD0180K.DSK" or "FDD1180K.DSK"
| driver files for David Keil's emulator.
|
| Where can I find a 180K driver?
|
You can use the FDD360K. Just be sure to format single sided, double density. You
should use your 360K drive. The 1.2M drive writes tracks at half the width,
requiring two head steps per track to simulate a 360K drive. This usually works for
reading, but not for writing, as half the track width is either old data or noise.
If you're successful in creating a usable boot disk, you should be able to assign the
physical floppy as drive 0 in the emulator and boot from it.
Larry
Neil
"Larry Fosdick" <larry_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bHHaa.21285$qi4.13782@rwcrnsc54...
>
> "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
> news:FQOdnR4vuco...@www.bayou.com...
> | P.S. I have looked and cannot find the "FDD0180K.DSK" or
"FDD1180K.DSK"
> | driver files for David Keil's emulator.
> |
> | Where can I find a 180K driver?
> |
>
> You can use the FDD360K. Just be sure to format single sided,
double density. You
> should use your 360K drive. The 1.2M drive writes tracks at half
the width,
> requiring two head steps per track to simulate a 360K drive. This
usually works for
> reading, but not for writing, as half the track width is either old
data or noise.
That's why you should bulk erase the disk first, then re-format on
the 1.2Mb. This also avoids the sector 1 problem.
> If you're successful in creating a usable boot disk, you should be
able to assign the
> physical floppy as drive 0 in the emulator and boot from it.
Neil
Roger Taylor
That's what I was thinking. I've been using the FDD1360K.DSK driver. I
used CopyCat to make a copy of a virtual disk "TRSDOS621.DSK" which reports
being Level AR. This DOES boot from the emulator when I tell Drive 0 to
mount the FDD1360K.DSK driver which is my B: drive (360k). I took out my
1.2m drive just for these experiments.
However... the real Model 4P won't boot the disk. I either get a screen
full of "A:"'s or the light just comes on, back off, and nothing happens
forever. The letter A's have two dots on top of them.
I've inserted random Tandy CoCo floppies in my Model 4P just to get some
kind of reaction, and a few have briefly said "loading ROM, please wait..."
or something like that, and ofcourse it wasn't there. But my own created
disk doesn't even do this.
Here is my Plan B... I would like to take one of my 1.2m PC floppy drives
that work great and put it in as Drive 1, and one of my good 1.44m drives
which is in a chassis and mount it as Drive 0. I am assuming they will act
like 360k and 720k drives, even though I know the 720k will probably access
40-tracks mostly.
I have cleaned my 4P's drive heads with an alchol soaked cloth-type cleaning
disk, but once the heads are so bad, it's hard to clean them that way, and
it could also be an alignment problem, and is why I would rather just put in
some like-new drives I have in my spares box.
Tim Mann
wrote:
> That's what I was thinking. I've been using the FDD1360K.DSK driver.
> I used CopyCat to make a copy of a virtual disk "TRSDOS621.DSK" which
> reports being Level AR. This DOES boot from the emulator when I tell
> Drive 0 to mount the FDD1360K.DSK driver which is my B: drive (360k).
> I took out my 1.2m drive just for these experiments.
Are you sure the copy is single-sided? If you got your TRSDOS 6 from
David Keil's page, it might have been formatted as double-sided for
convenience in use with the emulator. It might even be a modified
version that only works in his emulator, but I don't know that. Be sure
to get a clean version of LS-DOS 6.3.1 from my site, or perhaps a clean
TRSDOS 6 from www.trs-80.com.
> Here is my Plan B... I would like to take one of my 1.2m PC floppy
> drives that work great and put it in as Drive 1, and one of my good
> 1.44m drives which is in a chassis and mount it as Drive 0. I am
> assuming they will act like 360k and 720k drives,
Not a good assumption. You'll have to get the cabling and jumpering
just right to make these drives work in your TRS-80. The 1.2MB drive
may not work at all, depending on whether it has the capability of
slowing down to 300 RPM when used in DD mode. If it does have that
capability, you'll have to change a jumper to enable it, as 5.25" drives
set up for a modern PC always spin at 360 RPM. See
http://tim-mann.org/trs80faq.html for more information.
> even though I know
> the 720k will probably access 40-tracks mostly.
I don't understand what you mean by "40-tracks mostly". The 1.2MB drive
is an 80 track per side drive. It does not have any built-in ability to
skip every other track, which is what you'd need to do in order to
access 40-track diskettes in it. That's OK if you write 80-track
diskettes in it or in another 80-track drive and use those.
> I have cleaned my 4P's drive heads with an alchol soaked cloth-type
> cleaning disk, but once the heads are so bad, it's hard to clean them
> that way, and it could also be an alignment problem, and is why I
> would rather just put in some like-new drives I have in my spares box.
Seems like a good idea; just be sure you get them set up right.
--
Tim Mann use...@tim-mann.org http://www.tim-mann.org/
Roger Taylor
> David Keil's page, it might have been formatted as double-sided for
> convenience in use with the emulator. It might even be a modified
> version that only works in his emulator, but I don't know that. Be sure
> to get a clean version of LS-DOS 6.3.1 from my site, or perhaps a clean
> TRSDOS 6 from www.trs-80.com.
First, I notice now that when I hold down "." when I turn on the real 4P, it
does a memory test, which basically says "Modified Address Test ld (hl)
,mask 00-0F. Nothing appears under the line "Address Retry Read Written
Mask", but in the bottom-right corner it says "Stack " + (2 garbage
characters).
I have the .dsk files from the TRS-80.com site. Glancing at the filesizes,
I cannot compute the format of the .dsk because I do not have enough
knowledge about sector sizes, standard track sizes for the OS disks, etc. I
do, however, have lots of experience with the Tandy CoCo emulators,
including David Keil's which is very similar to the other TRS-80 emulators.
From David's TRS-Model 4 emulator, I am mounting TRSDOS62.DSK in Drive 0,
and FDD1360K.DSK in Drive 1. I then insert a DD floppy, and type FORMAT and
answer the simple questions, Drive 1, 1 Side, Double-Density, 40 tracks.
Format goes well... then I insert COPYCAT.DSK in Drive 0, and hit F10 to
reset and boot that up.
Then I remount TRSDOS62.DSK in Drive 0, and try to copy it to Drive 1 where
my real floppy is in the PC. The FIRST thing I see is "Double Density
Error" or something like that, on every disk. The only disk I haven't seen
it on was a FLIPPY disk I have, but that one nor the other ones will boot
from the real Model 4, even if it boots from the emulator set to have B:
(360k DD) in Drive 1 by using FDD1360K.DSK.
Here's an interesting note... last night I went through about 50 PC floppy
disks (all DD format, including commercial stuff and personal disks),
putting them in the real Model 4P and hitting reset. Very often I got a
real quick message saying "Loading ROM..." and then "ROM was not found...",
which now makes me think that the emulator is not writing compatible disks
for the real 4P. Any disk I make with the emulator, causes the real 4P to
just turn the drive light on, back off, and just sit there forever.
Interesting enough, if you turn the video brightness up on the real 4P, you
can see the screen lose the top and bottom border right when the disk light
comes on, but ONLY with the disks I make with the emulator.
So am I at the "bulk-eraser" stage now? :)
I really want to get this neat machine set up for my two young kids to have
some alphabet learning programs and other educational stuff to play with.
I've already told my 2 1/2 year old son it was "his puter", to which he
immediately replied, "my puter?" heheheh. 'Ats My Boy!
P.S. Visit my site, www.CoCo3.com, if you're wondering what the TRS-80 Color
Computer world is up to today. It might surprise you!
Thanks for any help from ANYONE on this frustrating Model 4P problem I am
having.
Roger Taylor
> > Are you sure the copy is single-sided? If you got your TRSDOS 6 from
> > David Keil's page, it might have been formatted as double-sided for
> > convenience in use with the emulator. It might even be a modified
> > version that only works in his emulator, but I don't know that. Be sure
> > to get a clean version of LS-DOS 6.3.1 from my site, or perhaps a clean
> > TRSDOS 6 from www.trs-80.com.
A followup...
From DMK 4P emulator: LDOS in Drive 0, FDD1360K.DSK in Drive 1: I formatted
my real floppy using single-density format, 1 side, 40 tracks. With
DiskCopy in Drive 0, I hit ENTER only to find that the 3.5" floppy in my
PC's A: Drive (holding DMK's emulator, btw), gets WRITTEN OVER by
DiskCopy... whenever it says "Writing Drive 1", it doesn't... it just writes
over Drive 0, trashing my DMK disk every time. So I made a few of them, and
they, too, got trashed. I really think David got the FDD0360K and FDD1360K
drivers swapped.
Using VDD1360.DSK worked. The B: drive and my real floppy now contain a
single-density copy of LDOS 3.x? It does boot fine from the emulator by
mounting the B: Drive into the emulator's Drive 0. In fact, all real
floppies made by DiskCopy are reading fine from the emulator, but not the
real Model 4P.
I turn on the 4P with one of these DMK-created disks in Drive 0, and always
get a screen full of "A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:".....'s before any messages are
displayed. In fact, none are ever displayed. I even tried toggling the
single-density DAM type F8/FA, whatever that does. No progress.
I also connected a TRS-80 Mini-Disk drive I have to the floppy connector and
things work exactly the same. The drive light comes on and reads the disk
for a second, but still, the A:A:A:A:A:'s. My Mini-Disk drive is a
full-height drive in case. I also swapped the internal Drives 0 and 1 and
swapped their socketed jumper DIPs for drive select, apparently. Still,
nothing.
Am I supplying enough information for someone to recall any similar problems
they have had before?
Larry Fosdick
| > Are you sure the copy is single-sided? If you got your TRSDOS 6 from
| > David Keil's page, it might have been formatted as double-sided for
| > convenience in use with the emulator. It might even be a modified
| > version that only works in his emulator, but I don't know that. Be sure
| > to get a clean version of LS-DOS 6.3.1 from my site, or perhaps a clean
| > TRSDOS 6 from www.trs-80.com.
|
| First, I notice now that when I hold down "." when I turn on the real 4P, it
| does a memory test, which basically says "Modified Address Test ld (hl)
| ,mask 00-0F. Nothing appears under the line "Address Retry Read Written
| Mask", but in the bottom-right corner it says "Stack " + (2 garbage
| characters).
|
| I have the .dsk files from the TRS-80.com site. Glancing at the filesizes,
| I cannot compute the format of the .dsk because I do not have enough
| knowledge about sector sizes, standard track sizes for the OS disks, etc. I
| do, however, have lots of experience with the Tandy CoCo emulators,
| including David Keil's which is very similar to the other TRS-80 emulators.
A .DSK file will be somewhat more than the same floppy. A SSDD .DSK file will be
about 250K and a DSDD disk about 500K. If you do a DIR in the emulator, look at the
top line. It will list the number of cylinders (should be 40) and free / total disk
space. A DSDD 40 track disk will have 360K, while a SSDD disk will have 180K total.
| From David's TRS-Model 4 emulator, I am mounting TRSDOS62.DSK in Drive 0,
| and FDD1360K.DSK in Drive 1. I then insert a DD floppy, and type FORMAT and
| answer the simple questions, Drive 1, 1 Side, Double-Density, 40 tracks.
| Format goes well... then I insert COPYCAT.DSK in Drive 0, and hit F10 to
| reset and boot that up.
Why not use the backup facility in TRSDOS?
I have used David Keil's emulator to make both 5.25" and 3.5" disks for Models 1, 3
and 4. It does work. But you have to have a floppy controller in the PC that accepts
the right signals. You can't go by computer age. I've seen info concerning this on
Tim Mann's page.
Larry
Larry Fosdick
|
| "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
| news:sw-dnUVVj5Y...@www.bayou.com...
| > > Are you sure the copy is single-sided? If you got your TRSDOS 6 from
| > > David Keil's page, it might have been formatted as double-sided for
| > > convenience in use with the emulator. It might even be a modified
| > > version that only works in his emulator, but I don't know that. Be sure
| > > to get a clean version of LS-DOS 6.3.1 from my site, or perhaps a clean
| > > TRSDOS 6 from www.trs-80.com.
|
| A followup...
|
| From DMK 4P emulator: LDOS in Drive 0, FDD1360K.DSK in Drive 1: I formatted
| my real floppy using single-density format, 1 side, 40 tracks. With
| DiskCopy in Drive 0, I hit ENTER only to find that the 3.5" floppy in my
| PC's A: Drive (holding DMK's emulator, btw), gets WRITTEN OVER by
| DiskCopy... whenever it says "Writing Drive 1", it doesn't... it just writes
| over Drive 0, trashing my DMK disk every time. So I made a few of them, and
| they, too, got trashed. I really think David got the FDD0360K and FDD1360K
| drivers swapped.
Sounds like an issue with Diskcopy. If the drivers were swapped, then it would try
to write to physical drive A:. Further, you wouldn't be able to format the right
drive.
LDOS and TRSDOS for the Model 4 require double density. You stated single density
above. Recheck that.
Snip...
|
| I also connected a TRS-80 Mini-Disk drive I have to the floppy connector and
| things work exactly the same. The drive light comes on and reads the disk
| for a second, but still, the A:A:A:A:A:'s. My Mini-Disk drive is a
| full-height drive in case. I also swapped the internal Drives 0 and 1 and
| swapped their socketed jumper DIPs for drive select, apparently. Still,
| nothing.
The cable sets drive number in a stock 4P. If you look at the card edge connector at
one of the two drives, you should see three pins missing. Not sure what you changed
when you changed the DIP.
Mo
TRS-80 disks. I cannot make any model 4 disks, just won't do it. I can make
LDOS5x disks for the model 3 mode, if I fill the first track with garbage
"filler files". I believe the issue is that the PC cannot physically write
the track 0 that 3/4's use, in many cases I think it's the boot track. I
also am a firm believer in DMK's emulator, Tim Mann's is pretty good too and
would recommend it as well.
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
>
Frank Durda IV
: First, I notice now that when I hold down "." when I turn on the real 4P, it
: does a memory test, which basically says "Modified Address Test ld (hl)
: ,mask 00-0F. Nothing appears under the line "Address Retry Read Written
: Mask", but in the bottom-right corner it says "Stack " + (2 garbage
: characters).
That's the Tandy version. The M.A.D. Software version of the boot ROM
offers you a menu of disk drive, video alignment and memory tests at that
point. The Tandy memory test also only tests about 48K of RAM, while
the M.A.D. Software version tests all 64K of base dynamic RAM.
The garbage characters you see in video are the RAM used for the stack.
That's normal. The idea here is that the static RAM used for video memory is
more likely to work when other things aren't, like the dynamic RAM refresh
circuitry, a completely bad dynamic RAM chip, etc. The boot ROM is
written to avoid relying on main memory at all prior to getting into
the memory test, and the memory test avoid putting any temporary results
anywhere in dynamic RAM. That is why the ROM code looks a little strange
in this area (for those of you whom have disassembled it). :-)
Both Tandy and M.A.D. Software versions display little in the memory
test unless the test actually encounters memory errors.
Both Tandy and M.A.D. Software versions will display the ROM version
number if you press 'V' in the three seconds following RESET. 99% of Model
4Ps shipped with 18-Oct version. A very early and small production run has
an older version.
How long the "three seconds" are on an emulator running on far faster
computers is not known.
: real quick message saying "Loading ROM..." and then "ROM was not found...",
That means it thinks you are trying to boot a Model III (or more accurately,
a non-TRSDOS 6/non-LS-DOS 6) operating system and the boot ROM is trying to
pre-load the Model III ROM image in case the OS relies on it. Press the
"N" key in the three seconds following RESET and it will ignore what is on
the media and try to boot it direct. Of course, if the OS on the diskette
does require the Model III ROMs, skipping this will not succeed.
If the floppies you are "formatting" don't have the correct stuff on them,
like they are just formatted on DOS/Windows and have a copy of the MS-DOS
40 track SS DD "Not a System disk - press any key" stuff, the Model 4P will
not recognize that as being an Model 4/4P/4D OS, and will want to pre-load
the MODELx/III file from that disk, which it won't be able to do, because
the ROM doesn't know the MS-DOS FAT filesystem structure. (The boot ROM is
smart enough to read 256, 512 or 1024 byte sectors.) The media must contain
a real genuine Model III/4/4D/4P OS if you expect it to do anything else.
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"How do I know? I wrote the 4P
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | boot ROM code twenty years ago
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st | this year, that's how."
http://nemesis.lonestar.org |
Copr. 2003, ask before reprinting.
Roger Taylor
"Frank Durda IV" <uhclem...@nemesis.lonestar.org> wrote in message
news:HBM8K...@nemesis.lonestar.org...
> Roger Taylor <rta...@bayou.com> wrote:
> Both Tandy and M.A.D. Software versions will display the ROM version
> number if you press 'V' in the three seconds following RESET. 99% of
Model
> 4Ps shipped with 18-Oct version. A very early and small production run
has
> an older version.
My 4P is reporting "Boot ROM Version Is 1(15) 11-Oct-83"
Is this good or bad?
My DRAMs are good, the video works, I have placed my PC's true 360k floppy
inside the real 4P using a straight cable and changing the drive select to
D0 instead of D1. Nothing changed at all, the drive spins up the same,
tries to read the emulator-created floppy for a second, the light goes out,
and the video loses the top and bottom borders.
Should my emulator-created disks be made in Single-density or DD format?
I'm using SSDD, 40 tracks.
Roger Taylor
"Mo" <mo...@atariland.com> wrote in message
news:V9xba.32216$z54.1...@twister.austin.rr.com...
> Okay, I've had similar problems with using an emulator and a PC to make
> TRS-80 disks. I cannot make any model 4 disks, just won't do it. I can
make
> LDOS5x disks for the model 3 mode, if I fill the first track with garbage
> "filler files". I believe the issue is that the PC cannot physically write
> the track 0 that 3/4's use, in many cases I think it's the boot track. I
> also am a firm believer in DMK's emulator, Tim Mann's is pretty good too
and
> would recommend it as well.
> Mo
I started with David Keil's Color Computer II emulator, since I am a
"CoCoNut" and have neen since the early 80's. I was recently browsing
through the wonderful computer stuff that comes into our 2 local Goodwill
stores and came across this awesome-looking creature which I remember
glancing at in the Shack MANY years ago and walking right on by due to the
price... the item being a TRS-80 Model 4P. I paid $5.95 and walked out the
door RIGHT PAST the Radio Shack, where 2 young employees were taking a smoke
break. heheheh. Had it under my arm as they looked over strangely.
Anyway, so now I am using David's TRS-80 Model 4P emulator (mode). I keep
having to manually switch it into 4P mode, but that's no big deal.
THANK YOU for the above information. I have taken the 4P apart and examined
enough to come to the conclusion that the machine is not broke. ;)
So, what tool or other emulator is out there that can make the PC write
these floppy disks that the 4P can use? I had it in my heart to put all of
the TRS-80.com .dsk images on real disks and have a blast.
I will even settle for getting some kind of bootable OS disk and
"serial-porting" the other disks in somehow onto the disk in Drive 1. Any
4P utilities that can receive a virtual disk from the PC using Xmodem or
Ymodem across the serial ports, etc. and write them to a floppy?
Neil
>
> My 4P is reporting "Boot ROM Version Is 1(15) 11-Oct-83"
>
> Is this good or bad?
>
> My DRAMs are good, the video works, I have placed my PC's true 360k
floppy
> inside the real 4P using a straight cable and changing the drive
select to
> D0 instead of D1. Nothing changed at all, the drive spins up the
same,
> tries to read the emulator-created floppy for a second, the light
goes out,
> and the video loses the top and bottom borders.
>
> Should my emulator-created disks be made in Single-density or DD
format?
> I'm using SSDD, 40 tracks.
Definitely DD, SS.
Neil
Mo
Well if I understand correctly, either a 'catweasel card' or an Adaptec SCSI
card will do FM (single density). I have an old Adaptec 1522AHA card set
aside, along with a SCSI hard drive and a couple of floppies. When (if) I
have the time, I'm going to convert my old 486 into a SCSI system and see if
I have better luck. I'll probably wind up spending the $85 for a catweasel
though, I've heard they're worth it.
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
news:-GmdnXhPML4...@www.bayou.com...
Roger Taylor
want to sell? I can't get my PC and emulator to write floppies that work,
so this may be my only way to experience the real computer. I have
emulators out the ya-ya, and although they are super nice, it's not quite
the same.
Roger Taylor
>
> Well if I understand correctly, either a 'catweasel card' or an Adaptec
SCSI
> card will do FM (single density). I have an old Adaptec 1522AHA card set
> aside, along with a SCSI hard drive and a couple of floppies. When (if) I
> have the time, I'm going to convert my old 486 into a SCSI system and see
if
> I have better luck. I'll probably wind up spending the $85 for a catweasel
> though, I've heard they're worth it.
I was told several times that the format the 4P uses is SSDD...
double-density. Now, I'm confused. I purposely made DMK's 4P emulator make
a single-density copy of LDOS, which CopyCat did not argue about. Trying to
copy a .dsk onto a floppy formatted by LDOS using SSDD format, causes
CopyCat to say "double density format error".
I'll try the LDOS backup or diskcopy command and see what happens.
Mo
single density boot sector while the rest is double density. The model 3/4
was capable of writing in both single and double. This could be why none of
the disks you made work, because they're 100% double density.
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
news:3q-dnXT7m9u...@www.bayou.com...
Tim Mann
> Okay, I've had similar problems with using an emulator and a PC to
> make TRS-80 disks. I cannot make any model 4 disks, just won't do it.
> I can make LDOS5x disks for the model 3 mode, if I fill the first
> track with garbage"filler files".
That's strange.
> I believe the issue is that the PC
> cannot physically write the track 0 that 3/4's use, in many cases I
> think it's the boot track.
There is no such issue on Model III/4 double density disks. Track 0 is
no different in format from the other tracks. Only the directory track
is different from the rest, and not in a way that PC's have trouble
with.
Maybe either your PC drive or your TRS-80 drive has a mispositioned
track 0 stop, such that one of the drives is writing the track slightly
offset from where the other is reading it. This is a guess, though.
> I also am a firm believer in DMK's
> emulator, Tim Mann's is pretty good too and would recommend it as
> well. Mo
Thanks. :-)
> "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Am I supplying enough information for someone to recall any similar
> problems
> > they have had before?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
Tim Mann
> Right, but I'm sure someone will clarify me if I'm wrong.
OK, I will: You're wrong. :-)
> TRSDOS 1.X
> has a single density boot sector while the rest is double density.
No, it doesn't.
> The
> model 3/4 was capable of writing in both single and double. This could
> be why none of the disks you made work, because they're 100% double
> density. Mo
No, they are supposed to be 100% double density. The Model III/4/4P
wants a DOUBLE density boot sector. You are confusing it with the Model I.
Tim Mann
> I have used David Keil's emulator to make both 5.25" and 3.5" disks for Models 1, 3
> and 4. It does work. But you have to have a floppy controller in the PC that accepts
> the right signals. You can't go by computer age. I've seen info concerning this on
> Tim Mann's page.
The thing that not all PCs can do is reading/writing single density, but
that is needed only to handle Model I disks. Model III/4/4P disks are
all double density, and any PC should be able to read/write them fine.
You need to be sure you have a working 5.25" drive in the PC, that it's
properly cabled and jumpered, that the drive type is correctly set in
the BIOS, and that you are using the right media (DD, not HD). My web
pages have information that can help with this part too.
Also, as Frank said, bulk-erased the media before formatting it to be
sure you've removed all traces of any old format that may be
incompatible with what you're putting on now. My web pages have
information that can help with this part too.
Some kinds of incorrect settings (like having the wrong drive type set
in the BIOS) definitely can cause an emulator to write a floppy that it
can read back, but that nothing else can read.
Mo
disk wasn't aligned right. Now I know, the only thing I've used that drive
for was making model 3 disks so I wasn't sure. Thanks for clearing me up!
Mo
"Tim Mann" <use...@tim-mann.org> wrote in message
news:20030312005358....@tim-mann.org...
Frank Durda IV
: ... I'm sure someone will clarify me if I'm wrong. TRSDOS 1.X has a
: single density boot sector while the rest is double density.
Sorry, but that statement is incorrect.
TRSDOS 1.3, is SINGLE-SIDED, DOUBLE-DENSITY, ALL TRACKS.
The same is true of TRSDOS 6.x.x and LS-DOS 6.x.x as shipped.
ALL Model III/4/4D/4P systems require a DOUBLE-DENSITY (MFM) BOOT SECTOR.
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. ANY SINGLE-DENSITY (FM) BOOT SECTORS encountered
are ignored by the FDC, which is always programmed for MFM when running the
boot ROM code.
The only split-density operating system Tandy ever shipped with computers
was for the Model II/12/16/16B/6000 family, whose boot ROM all expect the
entire boot track to be recorded in FM, to be compatible with IBM 3741 8"
media format, and to avoid needing DMA during ROM operations. The remaining
tracks could be whatever the operating system allowed. TRSDOS 2.x for the
Model II/12/16 used 256-byte MFM, while TRSDOS-II 4.x, TRSDOS-16, and XENIX
used 512-byte MFM for all other tracks.
Some third-party application software for the Model I/III made split-density
boot tracks so that the same diskette could be used both on Model Is and
Model IIIs. In those (usually Powersoft products), the remainder of the
diskette was single-density, since that is all plain Model Is could read.
These strange diskettes had two sector 1s, one recorded in FM and one
recorded in MFM format.
Tandy sold (but did not ship with computers), versions of CP/M and obviously,
those versions for the Model II/12/16/6000 systems had to have split
density formats. Some versions for the Model 4/4D/4P had split SECTOR sizes
(because Digital Research falsely assumed the boot sector on a 4/4D/4P had
to be 256 bytes long - it does not), but these CP/M releases used MFM
(DOUBLE-DENSITY) recording on all tracks.
Guess I'll have to speed up the release of the web pages detailing the
format patterns for the various Radio Shack/Tandy operating systems I've
been working on...
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"How do I know? I did this big
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | study of media formats and the
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st | errors that the formatters made,
http://nemesis.lonestar.org | that's how."
Frank Durda IV
: I will even settle for getting some kind of bootable OS disk and
: "serial-porting" the other disks in somehow onto the disk in Drive 1. Any
: 4P utilities that can receive a virtual disk from the PC using Xmodem or
: Ymodem across the serial ports, etc. and write them to a floppy?
You could always order the real thing: http://madsoft.lonestar.org
carries them.
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"While we are here, do you want us
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | to fix that?" - Electrician pointing
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st | to a circuit box throwing sparks.
http://nemesis.lonestar.org |
Frank Durda IV
: My 4P is reporting "Boot ROM Version Is 1(15) 11-Oct-83"
:
: Is this good or bad?
This is a version prior to the 1(16) release, which is the one used
in 99% of the systems.
A quick look at the 4P Boot ROM source code refreshes my memory and shows
that the only change between edit 15 and 16 was to undo part of a change made
in edit 15. The change in Edit compressed the message dictionary and edit
16 undid part of that due to an issue with the serial boot loader that the
factory used during the burn-in process.
The factory wanted a message in the serial loader to say "Loading" but
instead it was saying "Loading ROM image", and this bothered them a lot,
so it was changed again. There may have been additional changes, but they
were so tiny they didn't get mentioned, and I was usually pretty good about
mentioning all changes, particularly in a "final" release.
1(15) and 1(16) were produced only one or two days apart. The date of 1(15)
and 1(16) were both arbitrarily set by me to a couple of specific dates of
interest in the (then) near future.
Since you don't do much serial boot loading, you should not notice a
functional difference between 1(15) and 1(16).
There was also a 1(12) version that was put in an early sample run,
perhaps a maximum of 50 machines. There were a bunch of changes between
12 and 15.
Of course, all of these Tandy 4P boot ROM versions are obsolete (in my
opinion). The "current" version (from M.A.D. Software) of the 4P Boot ROM
is 3(28) 26-Jan-92. You can read about its differences at:
http://madsoft.lonestar.org/catalog/4prom.html
: D0 instead of D1. Nothing changed at all, the drive spins up the same,
: tries to read the emulator-created floppy for a second, the light goes out,
: and the video loses the top and bottom borders.
This still means the diskette does not contain a Model III or 4 operating
system. Honest! An unreadble diskette WILL return an error (in the
real hardware it will, don't know what an emulator will do with media
errors).
If you have a real TRSDOS 6.1.x (or later) or any LS-DOS 6 diskette, stick it
in, press RESET and press F3 and P within three seconds. It should try to
read 14K worth of sectors from disk over a few tracks, so you should hear
the drive stepping around, and the "Loading ROM image" message should
come up during that time. If it gives an error about the ROM image being
"not found", that means the media is being read correctly, but does not
contain the correct contents. If it eventually asks you to change
diskettes, press ENTER and see if it boots now.
: Should my emulator-created disks be made in Single-density or DD format?
: I'm using SSDD, 40 tracks.
Your Model III/4/4D/4P diskettes MUST be DOUBLE-DENSITY, nothing else can
be used for booting. ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY.
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"How do I know? I wrote the code,
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | that's how."
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st |
Roger Taylor
> Of course, all of these Tandy 4P boot ROM versions are obsolete (in my
> opinion). The "current" version (from M.A.D. Software) of the 4P Boot ROM
> is 3(28) 26-Jan-92. You can read about its differences at:
> http://madsoft.lonestar.org/catalog/4prom.html
I thought that 4P's didn't come with a boot ROM. Mine has an EPROM on the
board of some kind, with 2 professionally soldered wires running from the
chip elsewhere on the board. The 2 pins have been stood out and aren't in
the socket.
So what exactly is my 4P doing at the point I turn it on? There has to be
some kind of boot code that tells it to look on the floppy for an operating
system. Or is it looking for the "real" boot ROM?
What does this M.A.D. version of the 4P ROM do vs. the stock ones? I can go
to their site and check features, but I have nothing to compare them to, as
I am new to the 4P. I absolutely love the look and feel of this computer
and I must get some software running on this baby before I go MAD, myself.
;)
Roger Taylor
> If you have a real TRSDOS 6.1.x (or later) or any LS-DOS 6 diskette, stick
it
> in, press RESET and press F3 and P within three seconds. It should try to
> read 14K worth of sectors from disk over a few tracks, so you should hear
> the drive stepping around, and the "Loading ROM image" message should
> come up during that time. If it gives an error about the ROM image being
> "not found", that means the media is being read correctly, but does not
> contain the correct contents. If it eventually asks you to change
> diskettes, press ENTER and see if it boots now.
EXCELLENT! I did this, and my eyes got big to see it say Rom Has Been
Loaded, so I hit Break, and now I have a prompt that says "Cass?"
Ofcourse, hitting ENTER crashes the machine, causing a stack blast right
through the video RAM, of junk.
Anyway, this is progress. So can I assume now that the machine is not
fried, and that my disks are not being created with the right data?
What is the exact BACKUP command procedure for copying a sector-for-sector
OS disk from DMK's emulator to a real floppy? I've tried CopyCat, and it
keeps telling me "Double Density Format Error" ... I'm lost there. BACKUP
hasn't argued, but apparently is not copying the system stuff needed?
Thanks for all the help I have received over the past few days. I'm getting
one more step closer to getting to play around on this great machine.
Mo
all TRS-80 users!
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
>
Tim Mann
> Some third-party application software for the Model I/III made split-density
> boot tracks so that the same diskette could be used both on Model Is and
> Model IIIs. In those (usually Powersoft products), the remainder of the
> diskette was single-density, since that is all plain Model Is could read.
> These strange diskettes had two sector 1s, one recorded in FM and one
> recorded in MFM format.
Apologies for nitpicking, but I think you meant to say "these strange
diskettes had a sector 0 recorded in FM and a sector 1 recorded in MFM."
The Model I bootstrap code reads sector 0 rather than sector 1. It's
still pretty darn strange to have both FM and MFM on the same track, and
it was tricky to make those diskettes (as you know).
> Guess I'll have to speed up the release of the web pages detailing the
> format patterns for the various Radio Shack/Tandy operating systems I've
> been working on...
That will be great to see.
Tim Mann
>
> "Frank Durda IV" <uhclem...@nemesis.lonestar.org> wrote in message
> news:HBo3K...@nemesis.lonestar.org...
> > Of course, all of these Tandy 4P boot ROM versions are obsolete (in my
> > opinion). The "current" version (from M.A.D. Software) of the 4P Boot ROM
> > is 3(28) 26-Jan-92. You can read about its differences at:
> > http://madsoft.lonestar.org/catalog/4prom.html
>
> I thought that 4P's didn't come with a boot ROM.
Then, as you said yourself below, how did you think they boot? The Z-80
has to run some code to boot itself, and the only place that can come
from is a boot ROM.
The 4P does not have BASIC in ROM, but it certainly has boot code in ROM.
> Mine has an EPROM on the
> board of some kind, with 2 professionally soldered wires running from the
> chip elsewhere on the board. The 2 pins have been stood out and aren't in
> the socket.
That's the boot ROM.
> So what exactly is my 4P doing at the point I turn it on? There has to be
> some kind of boot code that tells it to look on the floppy for an operating
> system.
Yep, that's what's in the boot ROM.
> Or is it looking for the "real" boot ROM?
Huh? What are you trying to say here? Did you mean to ask "Is it
looking on the disk for an image of the BASIC that the Model III has in
ROM, in order to load it into RAM?" That isn't a "looking for the real
boot ROM" in the correct sense of any of those words. If that's what
you're asking, though, the boot ROM does have the ability to read Model
III BASIC from the disk and put the machine into Model III mode, if
either you tell it to explicitly with keyboard commands or it sees that
the boot sector looks like a Model III boot sector. It doesn't do that
if you're booting a Model 4 operating system.
Tim Mann
>
> "Frank Durda IV" <uhclem...@nemesis.lonestar.org> wrote in message
> news:HBo3K...@nemesis.lonestar.org...
> > If you have a real TRSDOS 6.1.x (or later) or any LS-DOS 6 diskette, stick
> it
> > in, press RESET and press F3 and P within three seconds. It should try to
> > read 14K worth of sectors from disk over a few tracks, so you should hear
> > the drive stepping around, and the "Loading ROM image" message should
> > come up during that time. If it gives an error about the ROM image being
> > "not found", that means the media is being read correctly, but does not
> > contain the correct contents. If it eventually asks you to change
> > diskettes, press ENTER and see if it boots now.
>
> EXCELLENT! I did this, and my eyes got big to see it say Rom Has Been
> Loaded, so I hit Break, and now I have a prompt that says "Cass?"
>
> Ofcourse, hitting ENTER crashes the machine, causing a stack blast right
> through the video RAM, of junk.
"Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
something is busted.
The fact that you got "Cass?" on the screen indicates that at least part
of Model III Basic was read in correctly from the floppy.
The fact that it crashed after that indicates that either the machine is
flaky, or that some of what was on the floppy was garbage but there were
no disk read errors. Either is possible. I'm leaning toward thinking
the machine is flaky, based on what you've said so far. Getting a
known-good floppy from someone else would help to narrow it down with
more certainty.
> Anyway, this is progress. So can I assume now that the machine is not
> fried, and that my disks are not being created with the right data?
Unfortunately, you can't assume that. The machine isn't totally fried,
and your disk has at least some of the right data. But one or the other
is still messed up.
> What is the exact BACKUP command procedure for copying a sector-for-sector
> OS disk from DMK's emulator to a real floppy? I've tried CopyCat, and it
> keeps telling me "Double Density Format Error" ... I'm lost there. BACKUP
> hasn't argued, but apparently is not copying the system stuff needed?
BACKUP should be copying everything, but LDOS/TRSDOS6/LS-DOS BACKUP does
not format the disk first, so if you formatted it the wrong way (such as
insisting on single density), you'd have trouble. On LDOS 5.x, use QFB
instead. On TRSDOS6/LS-DOS, use DISKCOPY -- improved name for the same
program.
I don't know what you're doing with CopyCat to get that error, but I'm
not expert with CopyCat. You shouldn't normally need CopyCat for
anything but copying copy-protected disks.
> Thanks for all the help I have received over the past few days. I'm getting
> one more step closer to getting to play around on this great machine.
>
>
>
Frank Durda IV
: I thought that 4P's didn't come with a boot ROM. Mine has an EPROM on the
: board of some kind, with 2 professionally soldered wires running from the
: chip elsewhere on the board. The 2 pins have been stood out and aren't in
: the socket.
Because of your computer was made very early in production of the 4P, you
happened to get an EPROM, likely because the masked ROMs were not available
yet. (They used to take six to eight weeks.) For our purposes,
an EPROM in 4P == ROM in 4P == Model 4P BOOT ROM.
If you switch to a real ROM (or correctly-pinned EPROM, you will cut the
flying wires you have now.
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"The Knights who say "LETNi"
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | demand... A SEGMENT REGISTER!!!"
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st |"A what?"
http://nemesis.lonestar.org |"LETNi! LETNi! LETNi!" - 1983
Frank Durda IV
: "Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
: machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
: something is busted.
Pressing ENTER at that prompt does not go to ROM BASIC. Pressing BREAK does.
Pressing ENTER attempts to load and execute the code in the Boot Sector
(0/0/1) of a newly-inserted floppy. Whatever this is, it still sounds like
a botched boot sector and/or boot track on the floppy being used, although
there is a small possibility that there is a small flaw in RAM. (The
machine did run the built in memory test for an extended period with no
error messages, right?)
Assuming RAM is good...
Obviously the directory track and other tracks are readable enough to search
and find the MODELx/III file and the ROM was able to load the MODELA/III
image. However, the ROM is pretty forgiving about errors in how the disks
are formatted. For example, the DIR track can have the wrong DAM marks and
the boot ROM won't care, but when the actual OS boots, the OS will likely
freak if the DAM marks are set wrong on the directory track (or on all
other tracks). The 4P boot ROM also won't be surprised by having no sector
0 on the directory track when the OS would expect one, and will consider
reading sector 18 of the directory track (and even side 2) if it hasn't
found what it wants by then. That allows it to cope with the TRSDOS 1.3,
LDOS 5, TRSDOS 6/LS-DOS 6 formats, single and double-sided.
Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"The Knights who say "LETNi"
<uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | demand... A SEGMENT REGISTER!!!"
This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st |"A what?"
http://nemesis.lonestar.org |"LETNi! LETNi! LETNi!" - 1983
Jan Vanden Bossche
Get the TRS-DOS 6 operating manual from Ira's site.
Roger Taylor wrote in message ...
>
>What is the exact BACKUP command procedure for copying a sector-for-sector
>OS disk from DMK's emulator to a real floppy?
You don't need that, if your (emulated) disk is double-sided.
Format a disk single-side. (say, drive :1)
and then:
BACKUP :0 :1 (s,i,q=n)
> BACKUP
>hasn't argued, but apparently is not copying the system stuff needed?
Yes, it's not copying the SYSTEM files !
>Thanks for all the help I have received over the past few days. I'm
getting
>one more step closer to getting to play around on this great machine.
Jan
Jan Vanden Bossche
Tim Mann wrote in message <20030314014634....@tim-mann.org>...
>> > If you have a real TRSDOS 6.1.x (or later) or any LS-DOS 6 diskette,
stick
>> > it
>> > in, press RESET and press F3 and P within three seconds.
>>
>> Loaded, so I hit Break, and now I have a prompt that says "Cass?"
That is normal.
>> Ofcourse, hitting ENTER crashes the machine, causing a stack blast right
>> through the video RAM, of junk.
That is not normal.
>"Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
>machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
>something is busted.
No, with the ROM loaded, hitting ENTER causes the machine to look for a
model III operating system. Since he prepared this disk starting from an
emulated DOS 6.x, that isn't there. So the operating system loaded is again
a model 4 one, wich doesn't work. Round and round and round ...
>The fact that you got "Cass?" on the screen indicates that at least part
>of Model III Basic was read in correctly from the floppy.
That indicates AFAIK that the complete model II ROM is there...
>The fact that it crashed after that indicates that either the machine is
>flaky, or that some of what was on the floppy was garbage but there were
>no disk read errors. Either is possible. I'm leaning toward thinking
>the machine is flaky, based on what you've said so far.
I'm not yet that far. It might be as simple that he hasn't prepared a proper
model 4P bootable OS disk yet.
> Getting a
>known-good floppy from someone else would help to narrow it down with
>more certainty.
That would solve a LOT of problems. (tweety: I'd say that was a
biiiiiiiiiiiiig YES)
>BACKUP should be copying everything,
A backup from disk to disk, yes, but a backup-reconstruct might not.
>On TRSDOS6/LS-DOS, use DISKCOPY -- improved name for the same
>program.
Don't forget: source has to be Single Sided. Is it ?
>> Thanks for all the help I have received over the past few days. I'm
getting
>> one more step closer to getting to play around on this great machine.
as long as you are willing to try, I'm willing to help.
Jan
Tim Mann
> Tim Mann <use...@tim-mann.org> wrote:
> : "Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
> : machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
> : something is busted.
>
> Pressing ENTER at that prompt does not go to ROM BASIC. Pressing BREAK does.
Hmm, maybe I misunderstood the text above this that you snipped. Here
it is again:
On Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:55:35 -0600, "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote:
> EXCELLENT! I did this, and my eyes got big to see it say Rom Has Been
> Loaded, so I hit Break, and now I have a prompt that says "Cass?"
>
> Ofcourse, hitting ENTER crashes the machine, causing a stack blast right
> through the video RAM, of junk.
I thought he meant that hitting ENTER at the "Cass?" prompt was crashing
the machine. If he meant that hitting ENTER instead of BREAK at "Rom
Has Been Loaded" crashed the machine, that's different, as you describe
below.
Roger, if you're reading this, which one is it that causes the crash?
Pressing BREAK at "Rom has Been Loaded" and then pressing ENTER at
"Cass?", or pressing ENTER immediately at "Rom Has Been Loaded" without
pressing BREAK?
> Pressing ENTER attempts to load and execute the code in the Boot Sector
> (0/0/1) of a newly-inserted floppy. Whatever this is, it still sounds like
> a botched boot sector and/or boot track on the floppy being used, although
> there is a small possibility that there is a small flaw in RAM. (The
> machine did run the built in memory test for an extended period with no
> error messages, right?)
>
> Assuming RAM is good...
>
> Obviously the directory track and other tracks are readable enough to search
> and find the MODELx/III file and the ROM was able to load the MODELA/III
> image. However, the ROM is pretty forgiving about errors in how the disks
> are formatted. For example, the DIR track can have the wrong DAM marks and
> the boot ROM won't care, but when the actual OS boots, the OS will likely
> freak if the DAM marks are set wrong on the directory track (or on all
> other tracks). The 4P boot ROM also won't be surprised by having no sector
> 0 on the directory track when the OS would expect one, and will consider
> reading sector 18 of the directory track (and even side 2) if it hasn't
> found what it wants by then. That allows it to cope with the TRSDOS 1.3,
> LDOS 5, TRSDOS 6/LS-DOS 6 formats, single and double-sided.
>
>
> Frank Durda IV - only this address works:|"The Knights who say "LETNi"
> <uhclem.mar03%nemesis.lonestar.org> | demand... A SEGMENT REGISTER!!!"
> This Anti-spam address expires Mar. 31st |"A what?"
> http://nemesis.lonestar.org |"LETNi! LETNi! LETNi!" - 1983
> Copr. 2003, ask before reprinting.
>
Tim Mann
good single-sided copy of TRSDOS 6, let's try starting again from this
point. Here are some things to try.
1) Check that the TRSDOS 6 disk you are trying to boot your Model 4P
from is really correctly formatted, single-sided, and bootable:
A) Hook up your real 360K drive to your PC and make sure the BIOS
settings for it are correct. That is, turn on your machine, press
whatever key gets you into the BIOS SETUP screens, and make sure
that the BIOS knows this is a 5.25" 360K drive and not something else.
B) Configure your emulator to have your real 360K drive as drive 0.
C) Put the disk in and try to boot the emulator with it. If that
works, it looks like the disk is correctly formatted and bootable.
D) Within the emulator, type the command "DEVICE". The first line should say:
:0 [TRSDOS62] 5" Floppy #0, Cyls= 40, Dden, Sides=1, Step=6ms, Dly=.5s
The part in the [] is not important. The rest is important. If Cyls
is more than 40, this isn't a 40-track disk. If it says Sden (not Dden),
it's not double density (but in that case you wouldn't have been able to
boot it, so you won't see that). If Sides=2, it's two-sided, so the drive
in your Model 4P won't be able to read it correctly -- it won't detect
any errors, but it will read sectors from side 0 when it's trying to read
side 1. If Step is not 6ms, the step rate may be wrong for the old drive
in your 4P and it may not be able to step properly. If Dly is less than
.5s, there may not be enough spin-up time allowed for the drive in your 4P.
2) Try making a known-good LS-DOS 6.3.1 disk. LS-DOS 6.3.1 is a
compatible upgrade from TRSDOS 6.2 from the same company that produced
TRSDOS 6.x for Tandy. It's not important that this disk is LS-DOS
6.3.1; what's important is that we know it's an exact copy of an
unmodified factory-fresh single sided distribution master.
A) Download a clean LS-DOS 6.3.1. disk image from this URL:
http://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/ld4-631.zip
Unzip it to get the .dsk image.
B) Configure your emulator with this image as drive 0 and and your real
360K drive as drive 1.
C) Bulk-erase a DD (not HD) 5.25" floppy disk with an AC bulk tape
eraser. Put it in the drive.
D) Boot your emulator off the disk image and type "DISKCOPY :0 :1".
E) If you want, you can now test this disk as in (1) above.
F) Try booting your 4P with this disk.
G) This disk will also have a MODELA/III file on it, so you can
also use it to load the Model III Basic image if you want, using
the procedure that Frank described.
On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 01:05:21 -0600, "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote:
> I've been using FDD360K and VDD360K. Hmmm.
>
> Anyway, CopyCat has made me 3 floppies so far of TRSDOS62.DSK which will not
> boot on the 4P, but...
>
> With these emulator-made floppies, as SOON as the Drive 0 light comes on (on
> the real 4P), the screen fills with repeated "A:"'s where the A has two dots
> on top.
>
> Thanks for the 180K tip. I'm off to work on this now.
>
>
>
> "Doug & Lissa Thompson" <sa...@mts.net> wrote in message
> news:3E6AD12...@mts.net...
> > The standard 4P came with 180K single sided drives (SSDD). Make sure
> > you are booting the emulator with a single sided disk and that you have
> > the real floppy set up with FDD180K.DSK in order to create a disk that
> > will boot the 4P.
> >
> > Your other choice is to replace the 2 floppies in the 4P with double
> > sided drives and adding a pin to the drive cable (1 pin for each floppy)
> > so enable the Side Select function (I think it goes in as pin 32).
> >
> > lots of luck...real 4Ps are fantastic...I still have mine which I bought
> > in 1985....
> >
> > Douggy T
> >
> > Roger Taylor wrote:
> > > I just aquired a Model 4P in great condition, with NO software, and I
> want
> > > to get something going on it to play around with.
> > >
> > > Using David Keil's emulator, I managed to boot into TRSDOS 6.2 in Drive
> 0,
> > > and a driver "FDD360K.DSK" in Drive 1, in an attempt to make a REAL
> TRS-80
> > > floppy disk of the TRSDOS disk to be loaded on the real 4P.
> > >
> > > I have tried my 1.2m 5.25" and my 360k 5.25", both will format fine from
> > > TRSDOS... and report 40 tracks read back just fine.
> > >
> > > Any attempt to BACKUP Drive 0 to Drive 1 aborts with the message "write
> > > fault on drive" or something like that. Usually, one file is copied
> before
> > > the abort, so I know I'm close, I just can't figure out what's going on.
> My
> > > write protect is not enabled for David's Drive 1.
> > >
> > > I just grabbed CopyCat which I am going to try while I'm hopefully
> gathering
> > > some answers from kind folks here. Maybe it will work.
> > >
> > > P.S. the write fault error occurs with both of my perfectly working 1.2m
> and
> > > 360k drives. My BIOS has Drive B: setup as 360k DSDD right now, and I'm
> > > running the emulator from MSDOS or a Windows startup disk.
Roger Taylor
> "Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
> machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
> something is busted.
>
> The fact that you got "Cass?" on the screen indicates that at least part
> of Model III Basic was read in correctly from the floppy.
Yep, I am able to mess around in BASIC, but that's it. This is only after
holding down F3+P while booting the 4P. Otherwise, the drive comes on, the
screen's top and bottom border disappear (sync loss?), which you can see by
turning the brightness up, then the drive cuts off and nothing else happens.
So you say that BASIC is on the floppy, which is an enlightment to me
because I know that at least part of the floppy data is being read in. But,
why is BASIC switching in? Had LDOS loaded correctly, would BASIC be
ignored or just be shared with LDOS? I want to see the "diskette?" message.
;)
>
> The fact that it crashed after that indicates that either the machine is
> flaky, or that some of what was on the floppy was garbage but there were
> no disk read errors. Either is possible. I'm leaning toward thinking
> the machine is flaky, based on what you've said so far. Getting a
> known-good floppy from someone else would help to narrow it down with
> more certainty.
As to whether the 4P is flakey or not, I am getting some real disks from
someone and should know something whenever they arrive. I love DMK's
emulator, but even his CoCo emulator doesn't always write good floppies,
even using all the required hardware and media. I know that formatting a
disk on a real CoCo usually helps. Perhaps this is a formatting issue in
the emulators or a timing issue that might be corrected one day.
> I don't know what you're doing with CopyCat to get that error, but I'm
> not expert with CopyCat. You shouldn't normally need CopyCat for
> anything but copying copy-protected disks.
I d/led it from one of the emulator site thinking I'd need it with one of
the .dsk files. It was quicker than learning the BACKUP command. By the
way, Pete Bumgardner deserves much credit for being the first and only
person to tell me that BACKUP /SYS:0 :1(S) BACKUP :0 :1(i) is the
backup command syntax. Thanks, Pete.
If DISKCOPY is the preferred command, what is the syntax for that? I know,
I know... get the manaul. :)
Roger Taylor
> Since it seems there is still some uncertainty about whether you have a
> good single-sided copy of TRSDOS 6, let's try starting again from this
> point. Here are some things to try.
>
> 1) Check that the TRSDOS 6 disk you are trying to boot your Model 4P
> from is really correctly formatted, single-sided, and bootable:
>
> A) Hook up your real 360K drive to your PC and make sure the BIOS
> settings for it are correct. That is, turn on your machine, press
> whatever key gets you into the BIOS SETUP screens, and make sure
> that the BIOS knows this is a 5.25" 360K drive and not something
else.
Way beyond that. ;)
> B) Configure your emulator to have your real 360K drive as drive 0.
Been mounting it as Drive 1. Okay, I'll try Drive 0.
>
> C) Put the disk in and try to boot the emulator with it. If that
> works, it looks like the disk is correctly formatted and bootable.
The disk boots from the emulator Drive 1 or Drive 0, when created in Drive
1.
>
> D) Within the emulator, type the command "DEVICE". The first line
should say:
>
> :0 [TRSDOS62] 5" Floppy #0, Cyls= 40, Dden, Sides=1, Step=6ms,
Dly=.5s
>
> The part in the [] is not important. The rest is important. If Cyls
> is more than 40, this isn't a 40-track disk. If it says Sden (not
Dden),
> it's not double density (but in that case you wouldn't have been able
to
> boot it, so you won't see that). If Sides=2, it's two-sided, so the
drive
> in your Model 4P won't be able to read it correctly -- it won't
detect
> any errors, but it will read sectors from side 0 when it's trying to
read
> side 1. If Step is not 6ms, the step rate may be wrong for the old
drive
> in your 4P and it may not be able to step properly. If Dly is less
than
> .5s, there may not be enough spin-up time allowed for the drive in
your 4P.
Thanks for the above tip. I will also try that.
>
> 2) Try making a known-good LS-DOS 6.3.1 disk. LS-DOS 6.3.1 is a
> compatible upgrade from TRSDOS 6.2 from the same company that produced
> TRSDOS 6.x for Tandy. It's not important that this disk is LS-DOS
> 6.3.1; what's important is that we know it's an exact copy of an
> unmodified factory-fresh single sided distribution master.
Will definately do that when I get a known bootable disk.
>
> A) Download a clean LS-DOS 6.3.1. disk image from this URL:
> http://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/ld4-631.zip
> Unzip it to get the .dsk image.
Already have it. Boots from the emulator, but not from an
emulator-formatted SSDD disk mounted in my real 4P.
>
> B) Configure your emulator with this image as drive 0 and and your real
> 360K drive as drive 1.
?? Been doing that, but what about your suggestion above to set my real 360k
drive as emulator Drive 0?
>
> C) Bulk-erase a DD (not HD) 5.25" floppy disk with an AC bulk tape
> eraser. Put it in the drive.
>
> D) Boot your emulator off the disk image and type "DISKCOPY :0 :1".
>
> E) If you want, you can now test this disk as in (1) above.
>
> F) Try booting your 4P with this disk.
>
> G) This disk will also have a MODELA/III file on it, so you can
> also use it to load the Model III Basic image if you want, using
> the procedure that Frank described.
Much thanks for the above suggestions. I'm going to try all of this
tomorrow evening and will post my results.
But I have no bulk eraser yet. Any certain brand that works well, from the
Shack?
Tim Mann
>
> "Tim Mann" <use...@tim-mann.org> wrote in message
> news:20030315142029....@tim-mann.org...
> > Since it seems there is still some uncertainty about whether you have a
> > good single-sided copy of TRSDOS 6, let's try starting again from this
> > point. Here are some things to try.
> >
> > 1) Check that the TRSDOS 6 disk you are trying to boot your Model 4P
> > from is really correctly formatted, single-sided, and bootable:
> >
> > A) Hook up your real 360K drive to your PC and make sure the BIOS
> > settings for it are correct. That is, turn on your machine, press
> > whatever key gets you into the BIOS SETUP screens, and make sure
> > that the BIOS knows this is a 5.25" 360K drive and not something else.
>
>
> Way beyond that. ;)
Good, just checking. It's easy to get that wrong without realizing it,
and the symptoms are subtle: with some kinds of mismatched BIOS
settings, you can create disks that the emulator can read back but that
a real TRS-80 can't read.
> > B) Configure your emulator to have your real 360K drive as drive 0.
>
> Been mounting it as Drive 1. Okay, I'll try Drive 0.
> >
> > C) Put the disk in and try to boot the emulator with it. If that
> > works, it looks like the disk is correctly formatted and bootable.
>
> The disk boots from the emulator Drive 1 or Drive 0, when created in Drive 1.
"The disk boots from the emulator Drive 1" doesn't make sense. A TRS-80
cannot boot from drive 1, only drive 0. If you configured your real
drive as drive 1 in the emulator and booted the emulator, then the
emulator was not booting from the real disk that you had in the real
drive, it was still booting from the .dsk image file that you had in
drive 0. But I have to think you would have noticed that the emulator
was booting very fast and doing little or no access to the real drive,
so I'm puzzled how you could have made that mistake. Maybe you didn't
really mean to say this.
> > D) Within the emulator, type the command "DEVICE". The first line
> should say:
> >
> > :0 [TRSDOS62] 5" Floppy #0, Cyls= 40, Dden, Sides=1, Step=6ms, Dly=.5s
> >
> > The part in the [] is not important. The rest is important. If Cyls
> > is more than 40, this isn't a 40-track disk. If it says Sden (not Dden),
> > it's not double density (but in that case you wouldn't have been able to
> > boot it, so you won't see that). If Sides=2, it's two-sided, so the drive
> > in your Model 4P won't be able to read it correctly -- it won't detect
> > any errors, but it will read sectors from side 0 when it's trying to read
> > side 1. If Step is not 6ms, the step rate may be wrong for the old drive
> > in your 4P and it may not be able to step properly. If Dly is less than
> > .5s, there may not be enough spin-up time allowed for the drive in your 4P.
>
> Thanks for the above tip. I will also try that.
Do. This is the real key step to make sure that you made the right kind
of disk.
> > 2) Try making a known-good LS-DOS 6.3.1 disk. LS-DOS 6.3.1 is a
> > compatible upgrade from TRSDOS 6.2 from the same company that produced
> > TRSDOS 6.x for Tandy. It's not important that this disk is LS-DOS
> > 6.3.1; what's important is that we know it's an exact copy of an
> > unmodified factory-fresh single sided distribution master.
>
> Will definately do that when I get a known bootable disk.
?? The procedure below is telling you how to *MAKE* a disk that we will
know is good. (Well, at least we'll know it was a copy of an image that
is known to work in a real TRS-80, and that you made the copy in the
correct way.)
> > A) Download a clean LS-DOS 6.3.1. disk image from this URL:
> > http://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/ld4-631.zip
> > Unzip it to get the .dsk image.
>
> Already have it. Boots from the emulator,
OK, that's good.
> but not from an
> emulator-formatted SSDD disk mounted in my real 4P.
That's bad. Try making the disk again following the steps below.
> > B) Configure your emulator with this image as drive 0 and and your real
> > 360K drive as drive 1.
>
> ?? Been doing that, but what about your suggestion above to set my real 360k
> drive as emulator Drive 0?
Setting the real drive to be drive 0 was to try *BOOTING FROM A DISK YOU
ALREADY HAVE MADE*. Setting the real drive to be drive 1 is to try
*MAKING ANOTHER DISK*. When making another disk, you can't start with
the blank disk in drive 0, because your emulator (like a real TRS-80)
can boot only from drive 0. So to do this, you have to put the .dsk
file in emulator drive 0 and the real blank floppy in emulator drive 1.
> > C) Bulk-erase a DD (not HD) 5.25" floppy disk with an AC bulk tape
> > eraser. Put it in the drive.
> >
> > D) Boot your emulator off the disk image and type "DISKCOPY :0 :1".
> >
> > E) If you want, you can now test this disk as in (1) above.
Note that this means switching your real drive to be emulator drive 0,
as explained above.
> > F) Try booting your 4P with this disk.
> >
> > G) This disk will also have a MODELA/III file on it, so you can
> > also use it to load the Model III Basic image if you want, using
> > the procedure that Frank described.
>
> Much thanks for the above suggestions. I'm going to try all of this
> tomorrow evening and will post my results.
> But I have no bulk eraser yet. Any certain brand that works well, from the
> Shack?
Radio Shack sells a bulk tape eraser that works fine. The one I have
right now is a heavy-duty unit meant for erasing VCR tapes, part number
44-233A. It's handy to have for that purpose too. Long ago I had a
smaller one that was meant for audio cassettes; that worked fine too.
Tim Mann
>
> "Tim Mann" <use...@tim-mann.org> wrote in message
> news:20030314014634....@tim-mann.org...
> > "Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
> > machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
> > something is busted.
Note Frank's message about this point. If you hit ENTER at the Cass?
prompt, you should get into Model III Basic -- that's what I meant. And
from what you say below, apparently that did work. I guess you meant
that hitting ENTER at the "Rom Has Been Loaded" prompt crashes the
machine. More on that below.
> > The fact that you got "Cass?" on the screen indicates that at least part
> > of Model III Basic was read in correctly from the floppy.
>
> Yep, I am able to mess around in BASIC, but that's it. This is only after
> holding down F3+P while booting the 4P. Otherwise, the drive comes on, the
> screen's top and bottom border disappear (sync loss?), which you can see by
> turning the brightness up, then the drive cuts off and nothing else happens.
>
> So you say that BASIC is on the floppy, which is an enlightment to me
> because I know that at least part of the floppy data is being read in. But,
> why is BASIC switching in?
Because that's what's supposed to happen when you press BREAK after you
get the "ROM Image Has Been Loaded" message. This message means that a
copy of Model III BASIC (which on a Model III is in ROM) has been loaded
into RAM and write-protected. At this point the machine is emulating a
Model III. Pressing and holding BREAK puts you into cassette-only Model
III Basic, which is what prints the "Cass?" prompt.
If you instead hit ENTER at the "ROM Image Has Been Loaded" message,
then the machine tries to boot an operating system off the disk. At
this point it should be able to boot either a Model III or Model 4
operating system. At least that works for me on my Model 4.
> Had LDOS loaded correctly, would BASIC be
> ignored or just be shared with LDOS?
If you go on to boot a Model III operating system (like TRSDOS 1.3 or
LDOS 5.x) after loading the Model III ROM image, then the ROM image
stays in low memory, just where the ROM is on a Model III. If you boot
a Model 4 operating system (like TRSDOS 6.x or LS-DOS 6.x), the ROM
image is erased and low memory is used as RAM.
> I want to see the "diskette?" message.
> ;)
I actually found a way to get that message. Turn off the machine and
turn it back on. Put an LS-DOS 6.3.1 disk in drive 0, and press the
boot button with F3+P held down. When you get the "ROM Image Has Been
Loaded" message, remove the disk from the drive and press ENTER. Voila.
> > The fact that it crashed after that indicates that either the machine is
> > flaky, or that some of what was on the floppy was garbage but there were
> > no disk read errors. Either is possible. I'm leaning toward thinking
> > the machine is flaky, based on what you've said so far. Getting a
> > known-good floppy from someone else would help to narrow it down with
> > more certainty.
>
> As to whether the 4P is flakey or not, I am getting some real disks from
> someone and should know something whenever they arrive. I love DMK's
> emulator, but even his CoCo emulator doesn't always write good floppies,
> even using all the required hardware and media. I know that formatting a
> disk on a real CoCo usually helps. Perhaps this is a formatting issue in
> the emulators or a timing issue that might be corrected one day.
>
> > I don't know what you're doing with CopyCat to get that error, but I'm
> > not expert with CopyCat. You shouldn't normally need CopyCat for
> > anything but copying copy-protected disks.
>
> I d/led it from one of the emulator site thinking I'd need it with one of
> the .dsk files. It was quicker than learning the BACKUP command. By the
> way, Pete Bumgardner deserves much credit for being the first and only
> person to tell me that BACKUP /SYS:0 :1(S) BACKUP :0 :1(i) is the
> backup command syntax. Thanks, Pete.
>
> If DISKCOPY is the preferred command, what is the syntax for that? I know,
> I know... get the manaul. :)
I answered that in another message. DISKCOPY :0 :1, or just type
DISKCOPY and it will prompt you for what it wants to know. DISKCOPY
only makes sector-for-sector copies, so it won't change a 2-sided disk
to 1-sided or 80- to 40-track, nor will it change the stepping rate.
Mark
> As to whether the 4P is flakey or not, I am getting some real disks from
> someone and should know something whenever they arrive. I love DMK's
I sent 2 bootable floppys made on my model 4 with 1/2 height 360K drives.
The disks were formatted with LDOS 6.3.1 single sided Double density.
FORMAT (Q) Then answered the questions.
The 1st. disk (labeled 1 of 2) was made with the commands
BACKUP /SYS:1 :5 (S) and BACKUP :1 :5 (I,Q)
This should contain all the system files ,and all the invisable files .
Then I used BACKUP :1 :5 (Q) to copy the rest of the files that would fit.
The second disk was made with only the BACKUP /SYS:1 :5 (S)
Then I used BACKUP :1 :5 (Q) to copy the rest of the files that came
with LDOS 6.3.1 .Things like hard disk formatting and basic . Alsothe
help command ,there was room for ldos/hlp and dos/hlp.
Both disks should boot so even if the post messes one up you
at least a you should be able to rule out disks.
I got your email with your address thursday night so the disks went out
friday at 1 pm EST. Guess you should see them wednesday. In my haste to
get them on there way I forgot to set up some other machines and check
how they booted there (I'll do monday ,if there are problems another set
will
go out at noon. I'll let you know either way). The drives are direct drive
and interchange files with my pc emulator so they should be fine.
Hopefully helpful,
Mark Whitlock.
ward
> C) Bulk-erase a DD (not HD) 5.25" floppy disk with an AC bulk tape
> eraser. Put it in the drive.
You forgot to mention "Do this in another room, or even better, in a
different building, preferably one in another town".
When I recall the damage the sales reps did in my RSCC in Los Angeles
playing fast and loose with the bulk erasers, I cringe. The twits would
set the diskette on top of the computer (with a copy-limited original in
one of the drives) and buzz the thing for a minute or more. My managers
sometimes wondered about the number of sales reps who quit without picking
up their last paychecks. (Canvas and quicklime are your _friends_).
--
Ward Griffiths wdg...@comcast.net
What kind of online content will people pay for? Well, there's porn.
And dating sites. And Weightwatchers. The hopeless, the hopeful, and
those in-between. Reason Online, 3/11/2003
Amardeep S Chana
news:H3WdnQgI2ss...@comcast.com...
> Tim Mann wrote:
>
> > C) Bulk-erase a DD (not HD) 5.25" floppy disk with an AC bulk tape
> > eraser. Put it in the drive.
>
> You forgot to mention "Do this in another room, or even better, in a
> different building, preferably one in another town".
>
Good advice. Also remember to leave your watch and wallet in your home town
as well.
ward
I go anywhere, I need those. "Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch".
Otherwise I won't know what I'm missing after I regain conciousness after
being mugged in the next town over (Jersey City).
Roger Taylor
> > : "Of course" nothing of the sort. Hitting ENTER should *not* crash the
> > : machine at this point. It should get you into Model III Basic. So
> > : something is busted.
"Ofcourse", being my luck. ;)
> Roger, if you're reading this, which one is it that causes the crash?
> Pressing BREAK at "Rom has Been Loaded" and then pressing ENTER at
> "Cass?", or pressing ENTER immediately at "Rom Has Been Loaded" without
> pressing BREAK?
Even though I'm going to use try again in a bit to backup/copy a TRSDOS or
LDOS boot disk, I'll try this again right now and see what happens.
I have LDOS 6.3.? in, hitting F3+P said "Loading ROM...", Now it's saying
"The ROM Image has Been Loaded - Switch Disks And Press <ENTER> or <Break>
When You Are Ready"
Which confuses me a little because I really don't want to switch disks, so I
suppose I am supposed :) to hit <Break>. Anyway, I just hit ENTER and the
video lost the top and bottom border, the drive light went off and nothing
is happening. Now, powering back up and getting to the same prompt, and
hitting BREAK gives me the "Cass ?" prompt.
From the Cass? prompt, hitting BREAK just reprompts... no crashing here.
Hitting ENTER brings up "Memory Size? ". I am entering 32768 for no special
reason.
And I get:
Model III Mode ROM/Disk BASIC
READY
>
The "Disk BASIC" part throws me off because I can't get even the simplest
disk command. ANYWAY...
No LDOS because the disk won't boot anything on it's own without using the
F3+P option.
> > Pressing ENTER attempts to load and execute the code in the Boot Sector
> > (0/0/1) of a newly-inserted floppy. Whatever this is, it still sounds
like
> > a botched boot sector and/or boot track on the floppy being used,
although
> > there is a small possibility that there is a small flaw in RAM. (The
> > machine did run the built in memory test for an extended period with no
> > error messages, right?)
Yes, I've let the memory test run for a long time and no errors have come
up.
> > Obviously the directory track and other tracks are readable enough to
search
> > and find the MODELx/III file and the ROM was able to load the MODELA/III
> > image. However, the ROM is pretty forgiving about errors in how the
disks
> > are formatted. For example, the DIR track can have the wrong DAM marks
and
> > the boot ROM won't care, but when the actual OS boots, the OS will
likely
> > freak if the DAM marks are set wrong on the directory track (or on all
> > other tracks). The 4P boot ROM also won't be surprised by having no
sector
> > 0 on the directory track when the OS would expect one, and will consider
> > reading sector 18 of the directory track (and even side 2) if it hasn't
> > found what it wants by then. That allows it to cope with the TRSDOS
1.3,
> > LDOS 5, TRSDOS 6/LS-DOS 6 formats, single and double-sided.
I am thinking that my BACKUP method didn't copy everything, OR that my real
disks should be formatted in a real 4P before writing to from the emulator.
Here is the BACKUP command sequence that was suggested to me by someone and
is what I used::
BACKUP /SYS:0 :1(S)
BACKUP :0 :1(I)
emulator Drive 0=ldos virtual disk Drive 1=360k B:
All .dsk files I have attempted to backup to a real disk were 180k, source
and dest.
Now see a suggestion to use:
BACKUP :0 :1 (s,i,q=n)
So this is what I'm off to do now, and I will report back soon.
Thanks, everybody.
Roger Taylor
> Amardeep S Chana wrote:
>
> > "ward" <wdg...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> > news:H3WdnQgI2ss...@comcast.com...
> >> Tim Mann wrote:
> > Good advice. Also remember to leave your watch and wallet in your home
> > town as well.
>
> I go anywhere, I need those. "Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch".
> Otherwise I won't know what I'm missing after I regain conciousness after
> being mugged in the next town over (Jersey City).
> --
> Ward Griffiths wdg...@comcast.net
>
hahahah
Roger Taylor
BACKUP :0 :1 (s,i,q=n)
This backed up the disk file by file, but it would not boot on the 4P. F3+P
eventually leads to BASIC.
BACKUP /SYS:0 :1(s)
BACKUP :0 :1(i)
This backs up in 2 passes file by file, but no boot, either. BASIC can be
gotten to as above.
DISKCOPY :0 :1
This formatted each track as it went, but the final disk did not boot,
either. Same exact results as the other 2 attempts. BASIC can be gotten
to.
Pressing ENTER from the prompt "ROM has been loaded... press ENTER or
BREAK..." makes the drive head step a bit, like to track 0, and then ...
blank video, no top or bottom border, drive goes out, and nothing.....
So I will probably give up for a while and wait on my LDOS and TRSDOS disks
to come. Maybe this will get me started by letting me format from the real
4P and letting the emulator write instead of format. My PC is not all that
new. 450mhz P3, using a true 360k floppy drive for these tests.
The .dsk is from LD4-631.zip for those asking if I was using the right
version of LDOS for the 4P or not. I hope so. None of the TRSDOS 6.x
versions worked either.
Roger Taylor
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 01:08:06 -0600, "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com>
wrote:
> >
> > "Tim Mann" <use...@tim-mann.org> wrote in message
> > news:20030315142029....@tim-mann.org...
> > > Since it seems there is still some uncertainty about whether you have
a
> > > good single-sided copy of TRSDOS 6, let's try starting again from this
> > > point. Here are some things to try.
> > >
> > > 1) Check that the TRSDOS 6 disk you are trying to boot your Model 4P
> > > from is really correctly formatted, single-sided, and bootable:
> > >
> > > A) Hook up your real 360K drive to your PC and make sure the BIOS
> > > settings for it are correct. That is, turn on your machine,
press
> > > whatever key gets you into the BIOS SETUP screens, and make sure
> > > that the BIOS knows this is a 5.25" 360K drive and not something
else.
> >
> >
> > Way beyond that. ;)
>
> Good, just checking. It's easy to get that wrong without realizing it,
> and the symptoms are subtle: with some kinds of mismatched BIOS
> settings, you can create disks that the emulator can read back but that
> a real TRS-80 can't read.
Award BIOS 4.51PG... does this ring a bell with problems being reported with
the 5.25" 360K setting? I've heard that some people have to use the 3.5
720K setting for their 360k drive, but I am not sure what OS they were
having trouble with or if it was actually a low-level BIOS issue that causes
problems in all OSes. Hmm.
>
> > > B) Configure your emulator to have your real 360K drive as drive 0.
> >
> > Been mounting it as Drive 1. Okay, I'll try Drive 0.
> > >
> > > C) Put the disk in and try to boot the emulator with it. If that
> > > works, it looks like the disk is correctly formatted and
bootable.
> >
> > The disk boots from the emulator Drive 1 or Drive 0, when created in
Drive 1.
Was sleepy, my bad.
> "The disk boots from the emulator Drive 1" doesn't make sense. A TRS-80
> cannot boot from drive 1, only drive 0. If you configured your real
> drive as drive 1 in the emulator and booted the emulator, then the
> emulator was not booting from the real disk that you had in the real
> drive, it was still booting from the .dsk image file that you had in
> drive 0. But I have to think you would have noticed that the emulator
> was booting very fast and doing little or no access to the real drive,
> so I'm puzzled how you could have made that mistake. Maybe you didn't
> really mean to say this.
>
> > > D) Within the emulator, type the command "DEVICE". The first line
> > should say:
> > >
> > > :0 [TRSDOS62] 5" Floppy #0, Cyls= 40, Dden, Sides=1, Step=6ms,
Dly=.5s
Typing "DEVICE" reported Floppy #1 and #2, not #0 and #1. The other values
were as you listed.
> > ?? Been doing that, but what about your suggestion above to set my real
360k
> > drive as emulator Drive 0?
>
> Setting the real drive to be drive 0 was to try *BOOTING FROM A DISK YOU
> ALREADY HAVE MADE*. Setting the real drive to be drive 1 is to try
> *MAKING ANOTHER DISK*. When making another disk, you can't start with
> the blank disk in drive 0, because your emulator (like a real TRS-80)
> can boot only from drive 0. So to do this, you have to put the .dsk
> file in emulator drive 0 and the real blank floppy in emulator drive 1.
Oh, yes... mounting FDD1360K.DSK in emulator Drive 0, boots my
emulator-created copy of LDOS 6.3.1, so I know the data I need is on the
disk... which is why I like to think it's a DMK thing. What is the link to
that other disk transfer utility someone posted a day or two back? Maybe it
will work on my machine.
> Radio Shack sells a bulk tape eraser that works fine. The one I have
> right now is a heavy-duty unit meant for erasing VCR tapes, part number
> 44-233A. It's handy to have for that purpose too. Long ago I had a
> smaller one that was meant for audio cassettes; that worked fine too.
Used to make me very mad trying to erase CoCo cassette tapes for saving new
files to, only to hear that loud squealing still in the background no matter
how many times you used the recorder to "erase" it. ;)
Roger Taylor
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:43:03 -0600, "Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com>
wrote:
> >
> > "Frank Durda IV" <uhclem...@nemesis.lonestar.org> wrote in message
> > news:HBo3K...@nemesis.lonestar.org...
> > > Of course, all of these Tandy 4P boot ROM versions are obsolete (in my
> > > opinion). The "current" version (from M.A.D. Software) of the 4P Boot
ROM
> > > is 3(28) 26-Jan-92. You can read about its differences at:
> > > http://madsoft.lonestar.org/catalog/4prom.html
> >
> > I thought that 4P's didn't come with a boot ROM.
>
> Then, as you said yourself below, how did you think they boot? The Z-80
> has to run some code to boot itself, and the only place that can come
> from is a boot ROM.
>
> The 4P does not have BASIC in ROM, but it certainly has boot code in ROM.
Guess I was just asking what is on the ROM/EPROM. Man, I compute WAY too
late at night. ;)
> > Mine has an EPROM on the
> > board of some kind, with 2 professionally soldered wires running from
the
> > chip elsewhere on the board. The 2 pins have been stood out and aren't
in
> > the socket.
> > That's the boot ROM.
Was this a pain, having the 4P search on floppy for the OS, or were the
other models the same way? The Tandy CoCo boots up instantly with Color
BASIC, Extended Color BASIC, Disk Extended Color BASIC, if you're using a
CoCo3, a 4th ROM is appended, called Super Extended Color BASIC. 32k of
ROM BASIC in 1/4th second. Ofcourse, for OS-9, you are to throw a boot
floppy in and type "DOS" at the BASIC prompt, and away you go. Current mods
allow booting automatically into OS-9 on the HD, etc, etc. etc. probably
similar stuff for the 4P.
I have lost many floppy F.A.T. and directories by turning on the CoCo with a
floppy disk in drive(s). or turning the CoCo off with a disk in. Was this
ever a major problem with the 4P? :)
Roger Taylor
"Mo" <mo...@atariland.com> wrote in message
news:cUfca.6797$Ke.3...@twister.austin.rr.com...
> Don't give up, you seem to have that sheer determination that is inherent
in
> all TRS-80 users!
> Mo
Yep, I am the kinda guy who will *not* give up until I get this thing
running some software.
Er, uh... does being a CoCoNut quality me, also? ;) My first CoCo was
called a TRS-80 Color Computer, then Tandy for the later ones. Been CoCoing
since probably 84 or so. I lost track. I do remember walking by the
"Model" TRS-80's wanting to play around but being eyeballed by the Shack
managers, or have them stand over my shoulder in silence waiting for me to
move away from the TRS-80 area. Bwahaha.
How advanced are we in the CoCo world now? visit www.CoCo3.com
Mo
My coworkers are trying to get me to check into a rehab and get away from
computers for a while. 8-)
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
news:DZ6cnaY5EYr...@www.bayou.com...
Mark
> . In my haste to
> get them on there way I forgot to set up some other machines and check
> how they booted there (I'll do monday ,if there are problems another set
> will
> go out at noon. I'll let you know either way). The drives are direct drive
> and interchange files with my pc emulator so they should be fine.
Set up an origional machine with 2 origional floppys and disks made
on the Modified 4 boot ,no problems. I am beginning to suspect from your
other postings that there is an alignment problem between the pc drives
you are using and 4p drives. Since they are both 40 track drives , the
track width should not be an issue (earlier post mentioned using 360k
drive).
I can't remember if the 4p drives were belt driven or not ,anyone want to
clue me in ?
Even if the speed is in tolerance the hub could be wobbling causing
eliptical tracks .Or possibly the tracks might be at a slight different
offset
from concentric center even though the zero stop is correct. This would
cause track 0 to be ok but the other tracks off. Since you can read the
directory track (17 or 20 ) It may be the opposite ,where the zero stop is
off but the rest are ok. Weird it can load modela/III file but not sys0/sys
file.
Until later,
Mark
Larry Fosdick
| Oh, yes... mounting FDD1360K.DSK in emulator Drive 0, boots my
| emulator-created copy of LDOS 6.3.1, so I know the data I need is on the
| disk... which is why I like to think it's a DMK thing. What is the link to
| that other disk transfer utility someone posted a day or two back? Maybe it
| will work on my machine.
|
|
Some time ago you mentioned trying to mount the 360K in your 4P. There are up to
three jumpers you need to adjust. The first is the drive select line. PC's have
this set to Drive 1 always (that's why the cable twist). You need to set it to Drive
0. I think you did this, but want to make sure.
Next, try to find a jumper pair labeled "DC" vs "RDY". This affects the ready line.
In TRS-80's, it should be set to "RDY" ready, and the opposite for the PC.
Third, there should be a jumper to affect the motor on behavior. In PC's, it is MS
(Motor on Select), and in TRS-80, it should be MM. I have a couple of drives where
MS is labeled as MD.
Keep track of your jumper changes, so you can change them back when you put the drive
back in the PC.
It is not unusual for drives of this vintage to work by themselves, but not with each
other due to minor alignment drift. I have three categories for drives A, B, and C.
A drives work together but not with B or C, and B drives work together, but not with
A or C. C drives are cr--.
Also, you should be able to use the existing cable for single-sided testing, but a
straight-through cable with all pins would be best. Just make sure you disconnect
both 4P drives if using a straight cable, as they are set up to select as drives
0,1,2,3, and the cable deals with the selection.
Larry
Larry Fosdick
| Okay, I tried:
|
| BACKUP :0 :1 (s,i,q=n)
|
| This backed up the disk file by file, but it would not boot on the 4P. F3+P
| eventually leads to BASIC.
|
| BACKUP /SYS:0 :1(s)
| BACKUP :0 :1(i)
Just BACKUP :0 :1 should do a full disk backup. When you use the switches, you're
forcing a file by file backup. I don't think this is necessary.
Roger Taylor
"Larry Fosdick" <larry_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:FHsda.148193$sf5....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
> This sounds promising. If the emulator boots from the real disk, you have
the data.
> Some time ago you mentioned trying to mount the 360K in your 4P. There
are up to
> three jumpers you need to adjust. The first is the drive select line.
PC's have
> this set to Drive 1 always (that's why the cable twist). You need to set
it to Drive
> 0. I think you did this, but want to make sure.
>
> Next, try to find a jumper pair labeled "DC" vs "RDY". This affects the
ready line.
> In TRS-80's, it should be set to "RDY" ready, and the opposite for the PC.
>
> Third, there should be a jumper to affect the motor on behavior. In PC's,
it is MS
> (Motor on Select), and in TRS-80, it should be MM. I have a couple of
drives where
> MS is labeled as MD.
Hmm. I know about the drive select jumpering, but I haven't done anything
about the other 2. My 360k PC drive seemed to work exactly the same when
mounted in the 4P using a straight cable. I could check on this tonight but
I've been messing with the 4P too much this week and it's cut into my other
projects. If the disks coming in the mail won't boot on the 4P, I'll know
to work with the floppy drives a bit to see about a misalignment problem.
What I plan to do is copy as much online .dsk stuff as I can onto a CD, then
onto real floppies from the DMK emulator.
By the way, I'm booting using a Windows startup disk, then running DMK from
a 1.44 3.5". I've seen nothing in my config files that set any floppy
stuff. My BIOS is set to Drive B=5.25 360K.
Roger Taylor
"Mark" <ma...@abs.net> wrote in message
news:JEmda.28$ZZ2....@news.abs.net...
Yea, kinda baffling, especially when the experts can't sit in front of this
thing to see what's happening. So, I'm trying to explain it the best way I
can (at these late hours and no coffee), and I repost some stuff over.
I bought a $40 bulk eraser from Radio Shack today, totaling $44 something
from our 9% sale tax, duh,... anyway... this did NOT help the situation. I
was hoping like hell that my floppies were retaining some kind of data that
the real 4P was seeing and throwing it off. Nope. Anyway, I now have an
expensive magnet. Guess I've always wanted one of these things anyway, so
now I have one. The price was ridiculous, though.
Mo
and the tandon 360k drive. If it works, I'll be sure to let you know what I
did and how I did it.
Mo
"Roger Taylor" <rta...@bayou.com> wrote in message
news:4sacnV8RNp2...@www.bayou.com...
Frank Durda IV
: Note Frank's message about this point. If you hit ENTER at the Cass?
: prompt, you should get into Model III Basic -- that's what I meant. And
: from what you say below, apparently that did work. I guess you meant
: that hitting ENTER at the "Rom Has Been Loaded" prompt crashes the
: machine. More on that below.
I meant that at the change disk prompt, pressing BREAK goes into
ROM BASIC, where you would see the "Cass?" prompt. Pressing ENTER causes
the boot ROM to try to load a boot sector from whatever media is in drive
0 when you press ENTER.
Pressing BREAK, ENTER, H or L at the "Cass?" prompt should lead you further
into ROM BASIC no matter what. (I vaguely recall that anything other than
L" means "H" at that prompt. Oh, and don't give a size at the memory size
prompt. Let BASIC do the work.
When you press BREAK or ENTER at the "swap disks" prompt, shortly thereafter
you leave the 4P Boot ROM and that code is no longer executing or even
visible. You are either executing a boot sector read from a floppy, or you
are executing the Model III/4 ROM image and its ROM (or if you prefer,
cassette) BASIC.
:> Yep, I am able to mess around in BASIC, but that's it. This is only after
:> holding down F3+P while booting the 4P. Otherwise, the drive comes on, the
:> screen's top and bottom border disappear (sync loss?), which you can see by
:> turning the brightness up, then the drive cuts off and nothing else happens.
After waiting ten seconds or so after trying to boot from the TRSDOS 6 or
LS-DOS 6 diskette and things go dark, type "01/01/01<ENTER><ENTER><ENTER>"
and see if the disks start up again briefly. If so, your video is not doing
80x24 mode correctly. In such a situation, it has booted TRSDOS 6, but
you just can't see anything. Type "LIB<ENTER>" or "FREE<ENTER>" at this
point for further confirmation that things are somewhat alive.
You can confirm 80x24 works via ROM BASIC by typing "OUT 132,4" after the
Memory Size prompt and the screen should switch to 80x24. Characters will
be out of place, but all should be fully formed and the screen should not
be rolling, torn and the screen should not be blank. (OUT 132,0 or pressing
RESET puts things back). If you can't go into 80x24 mode, then you need to
adjust the video PLL cap on the motherboard.
Roger Taylor
4P does the same thing with those as they do with the disks I make with
Keil's emulator.
Turning up the brightness on the video clearly shows that about 1/2 second
after the drive light comes on for a bootable disk, the screen's Top and
Bottom borders go away, leaving a tall screen with the side borders intact.
For a disk that is NOT bootable, the normal text notes come up saying so,
and if you hold down F3+P for a bootable disk, the cassette BASIC is loaded.
Does the 4P change video modes when TRSDOS or another DOS is booted? If
this is a video problem then what chip(s) should I look into replacing?
Does this sound more like a floppy drive issue?
Neil
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it switches to Model III mode until
it figures out that it's a Model 4 boot disk.
Neil
Mo
model 3 mode with model3rom disk it will work. I've got a 4 that refuses to
do model 4 mode myself. By default his portable should be in model 4 mode.
Mo
"Neil" <wh...@nothere.com> wrote in message
news:iFwga.58265$Ty5.3...@news0.telusplanet.net...
Larry Fosdick
black&white or green screen with arrow keys on the left and right sides of the
keyboard. The second, the gate-array version, had a green screen and arrow keys
clustered together. Among other changes, the video circuits are quite different.
The orginal used a tunable PLL that had a sometimes funky tunable capacitor on the
motherboard. The gate-array got rid of this capacitor, but had several custome chips
on the motherboard.
When you get into cassette BASIC, did you test the 80x24 using the out132,4 command
Frank Durda mentioned? Did you get a readable screen?
You can also try to make a TRSDOS 1.3 Model III mode boot disk from the emulator.
This will load the ROM image and boot as a Model III. You can download the disk
image from Ira's site. Before making the real floppy, copy MODELA/III onto the TRSDOS
disk. Note that TRSDOS 1.3 is only 40 tracks, single sided, double density.
If that boots into TRSDOS, then you may have a problem with the Model 4 80x24 video
mode.
Larry
Christopher Noyes
I had a similar problem with my 4P (it had been in storage for about 10
years). When I booted up into TRS-DOS 6.2.1, all I got was some garbage
on the screen. It turns out that I needed to adjust a capacitor on the
system board. I can't find the link where I found the procedure, but I do
remeber that you had to remove the cover and front bezel, you needed a
floppy disk cable that was longer than the tandy one, and you had to
somehow (I used cd jewel cases) support the top half of the unit from the
bottom half (with the system board attached to it) with the top half
pushed slightly back to allow access to the tunable cap. I used a plastic
tuning tool to do this (this thing is ultra sensitive; you won't
have to turn it very far. In my case, all I did was apply a little pressure).
Anyways, you have to have the unit turned on and booted into TRS-DOS
6.2/LS-DOS 6.3 while you are making the adjustment so you can see when you
get a good picture.
HTH,
Chris Noyes
Larry Fosdick
"Christopher Noyes" <cno...@christopher-noyess-computer.local> wrote in
message
news:Pine.OSX.4.44.03033...@christopher-noyess-computer.loca
l...
| Hello,
|
| I had a similar problem with my 4P (it had been in storage for about 10
| years). When I booted up into TRS-DOS 6.2.1, all I got was some garbage
| on the screen. It turns out that I needed to adjust a capacitor on the
| system board. I can't find the link where I found the procedure, but I do
| remeber that you had to remove the cover and front bezel, you needed a
| floppy disk cable that was longer than the tandy one, and you had to
| somehow (I used cd jewel cases) support the top half of the unit from the
| bottom half (with the system board attached to it) with the top half
| pushed slightly back to allow access to the tunable cap. I used a plastic
| tuning tool to do this (this thing is ultra sensitive; you won't
| have to turn it very far. In my case, all I did was apply a little
pressure).
| Anyways, you have to have the unit turned on and booted into TRS-DOS
| 6.2/LS-DOS 6.3 while you are making the adjustment so you can see when you
| get a good picture.
|
| HTH,
|
| Chris Noyes
|
Similar instructions are in the FAQ at www.tim-mann.org/trs80.html
Note these work ONLY with the non gate-array 4P's.
Another option is to download a RS diagnostic disk from the Model 4 section
of www.trs-80.com (under the letter D). This disk is actually a TRSDOS 1.3
disk that tests memory, floppies, and video modes. It isn't the most
sophisticated, but I found it handy when diagnosing video alignment issues.
Larry