Date   : Tue, 01 May 2007 05:46:24 -0500
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Arthur on 5.25" media...

Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 15:28 -0500, Jules Richardson wrote:
>> <Tom Jones-ish>
>> Is that unusual?
>> </Tom Jones-ish>
>>
>> I always thought that Arthur was released on 3.5" media for the ARM machines, 
>> not 5.25" - I didn't think there even *was* an Arthur-capable system which
had 
>> a 5.25" drive as standard. A500 second processor, maybe?
> 
> ARM1 second processor, most likely.

I was just quickly poking around the disk images with a hex editor and found 
the following:

0001e600  64 72 69 76  65 20 35 0d  2a 7c 20 52  75 6e 20 6f  drive 5.*| Run o
0001e610  6e 20 42 42  43 20 77 69  74 68 6f 75  74 20<41>35  n BBC without A5
0001e620  30 30 20 73  77 69 74 63  68 65 64 20  6f 6e 0d 2a  00 switched on.*

... so I suppose that clears that one up :-) Anyway, going by the hex dumps 
the disks do indeed appear to at least be related to early ARM stuff, so I 
imagine they really are what they say on the labels.

I may well have unearthed Xenix bootstrap routines for the 32016 too 
(previously I'd found some design discussion documentation to prove that the 
project did exist, but until now no actual code).

According to the card indexes I've got, there should be source to ADFS, BBC 
MOS, US-BBC MOS and Electron MOS too, but it depends whether I have the 
corresponding floppies - I'd originally grabbed a few piles as a source of 
spare disks, and it was only later that I discovered that the contents were a 
bit interesting!


Sifting everything to weed out any personal information is going to be 
something of a chore - but once that's done I see no reason not to put them 
all online (subject to them having to be taken down if someone official 
complains!)

cheers

Jules