Possible Compact Flash issue

[Francis Cunningham]

I have a new RC2014 Zed Pro with the following modules:

Slot#  Module

===== ==========================================================

9           Compact Flash Storage v2.1 & 64MB for RomWBW

8           Z80 CPU v2.1

7           512K ROM 512 K RAM v1.1 & ROM R3.4.0

6           Dual Clock & Reset v2.1, Clock #1 & #2 both jumper on 7.3728 

5           Dual Serial v1.0, no jumper set, Adafruit FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Cable

2           Real Time Clock slider set #5 & #6 to 1

I'm in the basic functionality testing phase at the moment.  The RC2014 boots and responds to all of the BIOS commands: H, L, D, C, Z, M.

It also boots to the following drive/slices:

  2.0 - CP/M v.2.2

  2.1 - ZSDOS v1.1

  2.2 - ZSDOS v1.1 not Z-Com v2.0

  2.3 - CP/M v3.0 but it hangs, no prompt after "CP/M v3.0 [BANKED] on HBIOS v3.0.1" msg

  2.4 - ZPM3 but it hangs, no prompt after "ZPM/3 [BANKED] on HBIOS v3.0.1" msg

When I boot from the Bios into either C or Z both operating systems seem fine until I try changing into the 8th slice, J:, where CP/M hangs after printing a "Bdos Err On J: Select" message while ZSDOS is fine until I try changing into the 8th slice, J:, where ZSDOS prints the "ZSDOS error on J: No Drive; Call: 14" msgs followed by a prompt.

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Thanks

[Richard Deane]

It sounds as though you are using romwbw,  and i think only 8 drives are assigned by default.  Run the assign command to see current assignments, then perhaps do similar to define more.

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[Wayne Warthen]

Hi Francis,

Yup!  This is probably happening because you are using a typical 64MB CF Card as normally distributed by Spencer (which is fine).  If you do the math, it turns out that the eighth slice which is normally assigned to J: does not entirely fit on the media.  The OS catches this when you attempt to refer to that drive.  The cryptic message is what CP/M spits out when it attempts to "log" a drive letter and the underlying system reports a problem.  The RomWBW User Guide discusses this in section 4.1 Drive Letter Assignment.  You may also want to review section 4.6 Hard Disk Layouts.

So, your next question is going to be "Why is a drive letter assigned to a slice that is not usable?".  Ultimately, it boils down to the space constraints for code within the operating system.  The code to parcel out drive letters across all of the possible physical drives is already complicated.  Handling it this way is more consistent with the way CP/M works in general.  Think about a floppy disk drive.  It will always be assigned a drive letter even if there is no media in the drive.  When you attempt to refer to the floppy drive letter, that is when you get an error.  In fact, you will get exactly the same error as you are getting on the unusable slice.

On Wednesday, May 15, 2024 at 9:09:37 AM UTC-7 Francis Cunningham wrote:

It also boots to the following drive/slices:

  2.0 - CP/M v.2.2

  2.1 - ZSDOS v1.1

  2.2 - ZSDOS v1.1 not Z-Com v2.0

  2.3 - CP/M v3.0 but it hangs, no prompt after "CP/M v3.0 [BANKED] on HBIOS v3.0.1" msg

  2.4 - ZPM3 but it hangs, no prompt after "ZPM/3 [BANKED] on HBIOS v3.0.1" msg

When booting "2.2", you are going to see ZSDOS because NZCOM is not capable of actually booting.  NZCOM is started using the NZCOM command.  This should have happened automatically, but I think that is explained in my next paragraph.

Booting "2.3" and "2.4" should have worked.  The failure symptom you describe seems to indicate that your CF Card is running v3.0.1 of RomWBW.  However, if you got your kit recently, you are probably using v3.4 of the ROM.  The CF Card software is matched to the ROM and attempting to launch CP/M 3 or ZPM3 will fail as you describe if the CF Card is v3.0.1 and the ROM is v3.4.  If I am right about the ROM version you are using (version is displayed at boot as the "HBIOS" version) is indeed v3.4, then I recommend you re-image your CF Card using the file called "hd1k_combo.img" from the Binary folder of the RomWBW v3.4 distribution.  The RomWBW releases can be downloaded from the RomWBW GitHub Releases page.  General directions for re-imaging your CF Card can be found in the RomWBW User Guide in section 5.1.2 Hard Disk Images, although it is a lot to read.  If you are using Windows, just use the Win32DiskImager tool included in the distribution in the Tools directory to write the hd1k_combo.img image file to your CF Card.  Warning: this will overwrite the contents of your CF Card and the slices on it.  So, if you put anything on there, it will be lost.

I hope this helps.  Please ask if you have any more questions.

Thanks,

Wayne

[Francis Cunningham]

Thank you both for your responses.

Wayne, I'll read through the UG, and make a new CF card using the image file.

I'll update this thread with the results once done.

[Spencer Owen]

Hi Francis,

Apologies for any confusion there.

Yeah, it is quite likely that it was a CF card with the  v3.0.1 image on it.  There was an overlap between sending out the v3.4 ROM and still sending out the older v3.0.1 CF cards.  My testing of v3.4 didn't pick up that the CF image had changed as the cards I used still worked for what I expected them to do.

This was fixed a couple of months ago when it came to light, and now the CF cards contain the matching v3.4 image.

Spencer

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