Just a wild thought, but is the step rate set too low (fast) for these drives? I'm not sure how to change that in Heath CP/M, nor can I tell what the default is for any of those OSes. MMS CP/M has a MODE.COM command that should allow you to examine/change the step rate.
I seem to recall that the "original" H17 drives couldn't operate at anything less than 30mS. It is also possible that the drive is in need of maintenance and not stepping according to spec.
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The MMS format command should be checking whether your drive is
40 or 80 tracks. Do you hear it do 40+ steps in, then 40+ steps
out? There may be other reasons for it to spit out that message,
but it seems like MMS format may believe that the drive is 96tpi.
Or else the MODEs are set wrong and it never tries to step the
head.
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On Nov 2, 2021, at 5:44 PM, Alex - K3CIM <ka3...@gmail.com> wrote:
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On Nov 3, 2021, at 9:29 AM, Alex - K3CIM <ka3...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Alex: I recall our discussion at VCF east about terminators. The last drive (and only that drive) on the cable chain must have a terminator pack installed. I think CP/M may be more sensitive to this than HDOS? So the HDOS TEST17 may pass with flying colors but CP/M is more picky?
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On Nov 4, 2021, at 2:10 PM, Alex - K3CIM <ka3...@gmail.com> wrote:
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On Nov 4, 2021, at 4:19 PM, Norby <norberto...@koyado.com> wrote:
If this is on the H89 there is a 1K of memory reserved for the H17 to be able to boot. As this memory is not used by HDOS 2.0 , it will boot fine. As CPM and HDOS3.0 uses this region it will not boot if such RAM is not fully functional. I will check this RAM first to be operational.
Note, once CP/M (and presumably HDOS 3) are booted, that 1K is not relevant, since the entire lower 8K is all RAM. The various ORG0 implementations may have operated slightly differently, but the H89 would "move" an 8K block from high memory to low memory, except in the case of 64K where the low 8K was simply not enabled until ORG0 is set. Depending on your point of view, "56K" is actually "64K with the low 8K disabled".
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On Nov 5, 2021, at 1:31 PM, Alex - K3CIM <ka3...@gmail.com> wrote:
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The H17 "floppy" ROM only used that 1K for one special function (HDOS load device driver), that isn't involved in booting CP/M. I can't say what HDOS (2) does with it, but CP/M doesn't care once ORG0 is set. During actual boot of CP/M, I doubt anything depends on that RAM.
I'm not sure what problem we're trying to solve here... is it
still the failures in FORMAT?
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This would be the most obvious explanation for the MMS FORMAT error message, as it refuses to format 40-tracks in an 80-track drive, because the 80-track drive record head produces too narrow of the signal to be reliably read in a 40-track drive (which has a wider head/track).
I guess the proof would be to try and format 80-track media in
80-track drive. With MMS CP/M, this is pretty easy to do, later
versions of FORMAT even allowed you to change modes when you start
FORMAT (otherwise MODE allows you to do that).
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