H17 cp/m.

[Richard Davis Jr.]

I am using the cp/m disks for verion 2.2.03. I am using the boot disk that uses option code I.

I have 2 h17 drives and I can read the cp/m floppies in both drives.

However, I can't format any floppies. I always get media error.

Any ideas as to why?

HDOS has no issues with init etc.

Rick

[Terry Gulczynski]

Are you running @ stock 2MHz?

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[Richard Davis Jr.]

Yes.

8080 board.

Rick

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[Terry Gulczynski]

Then sorry, I dunno.

It's common for a machine to be running with a 2/4MHz clock switcher
(Z80 or 8080 doesn't matter.) The BIOS would have the clock switch
code, allowing the machine to run at the higher speed normally, but slow
to 2MHz when H17 is being accessed. This speed change action would not,
however, take place during formatting, since the formatter doesn't use
the BIOS, leaving the machine @ 4MHz, which will hose the H17 driver
timing routines.

(There are formatters that have been patched to control the clock speed,
too, in a manner similar to the BIOS.)

Regards,

Terry

On 5/29/2022 3:37 PM, Richard Davis Jr. wrote:
> Yes.
> 8080 board.
>
> Rick
>
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2022, 3:35 PM Terry Gulczynski <terr...@cfl.rr.com
> <mailto:terr...@cfl.rr.com>> wrote:
>
> Are you running @ stock 2MHz?
>
> On 5/29/2022 3:32 PM, Richard Davis Jr. wrote:
> > I am using the cp/m disks for verion 2.2.03. I am using the boot
> disk
> > that uses option code I.
> > I have 2 h17 drives and I can read the cp/m floppies in both drives.
> > However, I can't format any floppies. I always get media error.
> >
> > Any ideas as to why?
> >
> > HDOS has no issues with init etc.
> >
> > Rick
> >
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> >

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[Glenn Roberts]

The HA8-8 “extended configuration” card that allows you to boot CP/M (zero ORG RAM) also had an ability to let the H17 controller use double-sided drives as I understand. I never used this but recall that there was a wire that would connect to the H17 controller and some mods to the controller board. I know that’s not much of an answer but may give you a clue. I would consult the HA8-8 docs to see what info is there… others on this list are more familiar with double-sided configuration and perhaps can help… not sure if double-sided support was included in 2.2.03 or came out in .04?

Sent from my iPad

On May 29, 2022, at 3:32 PM, Richard Davis Jr. <rickdav...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Richard Davis Jr.]

I  am/was using Norbeto's org 0 board and i do have the ds option wired up. Just one wire added to the h17 for side select and the mod to disable the rom on the h17.

I have been having strang issues with his board. I just assembled it a few weeks ago. Using his board when i would save a file from the editor i would get a system error after the save. The docs indicate not being able to read a file on sy0.

Also after imaging the cpm disks using hdutility, the disks didn't seem to image properly.

Yesterday i went back to using my wirewrapped org 0 board and was able to image the cpm disks.

I ran the 2.204 setup and it failed when trying to copy files. I guess it wants formatted disks or something.

I went back to the cpm 2.2.03 floppies i imaged months ago and tried format again. I was able to format one floppy. Will try more when i get a chance.

On another note. I purchasd floppies from the surplus site someone mentioned and i have strange issues initing those in hdos. It almost always  complains about invalid media tyoe and if you keep retrying it eventually works. Drive sy1 seems to be more susceptible to this error more than sy0. I don't seem to have this issue on floppes purchased elsewhere.

Rick

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[Glenn Roberts]

Unfortunately if my experience is any indication doing anything serious with 40+ year old drives and/or media is a bit of a crap shoot. Even once you think you’ve got a reliable setup things will fail when it’s least convenient and you’ll hear that dreaded sound of the drive repeatedly stepping in and out.

I think it’s great to get these old drives working for preservation and demonstration purposes but I would suggest caution before doing any serious work with them or stressing things too much…

Sent from my iPad

On May 30, 2022, at 6:52 AM, Richard Davis Jr. <rickdav...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Peter Higgins]

A bit off topic... but my experience with the full-height 5.25" drives originally provided by Heathkit is similar to Glenn's. I've acquired a half dozen of these drives from various H17s and H77s, and have never found one that worked properly (or at all) even after cleaning and re-lubrication. I replaced all of them with Teac FD-55BV/BR drives which (by contrast) are very reliable in combination with the DeRamp "virtual sector generator" and most any 5.25" floppy disk. The only time those give me a "media error" is when the battery powering the "virtual sector generator" runs low.

[Dave McGuire]

On 5/30/22 13:38, Peter Higgins wrote:
> A bit off topic... but my experience with the full-height 5.25" drives
> originally provided by Heathkit is similar to Glenn's. I've acquired a
> half dozen of these drives from various H17s and H77s, and have never
> found one that worked properly (or at all) even after cleaning and
> re-lubrication. I replaced all of them with Teac FD-55BV/BR drives which
> (by contrast) are very reliable in combination with the DeRamp "virtual
> sector generator" and most any 5.25" floppy disk. The only time those
> give me a "media error" is when the battery powering the "virtual sector
> generator" runs low.

I've had good luck repairing these drives (component-level); if
they're not otherwise useful to you, I wouldn't mind having them.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

[Mark Garlanger]

Heath never supported double-sided or 96-tpi drives with the hard-sectored controller. It was a 3rd party company, called Livingston Logic Labs that offered "BIOS-80". They had versions for both .03 and .04.

[Mark Garlanger]

Have you used them with real hard-sectored disks, and not the DeRamp VSG? If not, then I bet a big part of the issue is with the original drives being belt driven vs. the direct drive of the Teac. Any constriction in the sleeve is going to lead to compounding errors on where the disk is expected to be and where the disk actually is. 

Mark 

[Mark Garlanger]

On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 5:52 AM Richard Davis Jr. <rickdav...@gmail.com> wrote:

I  am/was using Norbeto's org 0 board and i do have the ds option wired up. Just one wire added to the h17 for side select and the mod to disable the rom on the h17.

I have been having strang issues with his board. I just assembled it a few weeks ago. Using his board when i would save a file from the editor i would get a system error after the save. The docs indicate not being able to read a file on sy0.

Also after imaging the cpm disks using hdutility, the disks didn't seem to image properly.

What type of drives are you using?  What type of disks (hard-sectored or soft-sectored with virtual sector holes by hardware)? 

Yesterday i went back to using my wirewrapped org 0 board and was able to image the cpm disks.

I ran the 2.204 setup and it failed when trying to copy files. I guess it wants formatted disks or something.

I went back to the cpm 2.2.03 floppies i imaged months ago and tried format again. I was able to format one floppy. Will try more when i get a chance.

On another note. I purchasd floppies from the surplus site someone mentioned and i have strange issues initing those in hdos. It almost always  complains about invalid media tyoe and if you keep retrying it eventually works. Drive sy1 seems to be more susceptible to this error more than sy0. I don't seem to have this issue on floppes purchased elsewhere.

If you are using hardware to create the sector holes, there could be additional drag with those disks vs. others you have used.

Mark

 

[Richard Davis Jr.]

Peter,

I have 2 ds/dd full height dives. I am using the hug enhaced sy driver that supports the side select feature on the org0 board.

Just a bit ago i booted my original hdos disk with original sy driver and was able to init 2 disks i could not init using the enhaced sy driver.

I believe the enhanced driver claims faster read write times.

I think i have the same svg. I power my svg from the 8v bus of the h8. Seems to work ok that way.

Rick

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[Peter Higgins]

 Real hard-sectored disks have the same problem with these drives. The spindle drive motors work, and the disks spin at the correct speed. It seems the problem that afflicts some of them is that the head stepper motor no longer functions reliably, and despite lubrication of the entire mechanism the head stepper motors either don't step at all or don't "seek" to the correct track. On others, the head will step but the drive does not read data reliably even with the head cleaned.

[norberto.collado koyado.com]

As my real floppies H17 drives are slowly dying, I have been thinking for a while to convert my Z67-IDE to interface directly to the H17 controller to be able to boot Heath HDOS/CPM (00-99) floppies drives. I collected all the hardware to do this, and I just need to find the time to prototype it. As we can have two CF cards, we can do SY1:, SY2: for 200 floppies disks and SY0: could be a real floppy drive. I could use the same H17 circuit to separate the data and clock when reading and use same H17 circuit for a write operation. This controller will behave like a cassette player, to be able to record and playback. I think a 512KB RAM will be enough as we need about 200K for a single dual H17 floppy disk.

 

Also, I was thinking (not sure yet) in using the Z80 to leverage same H17 code instead of the DS89C430 microcontroller. Also, use same UART as in the H8 system to configure the board.

 

Perhaps for this winter, I can prototype this.

 

Norberto