Date : Mon, 01 Oct 1984 23:39:00 MDT (Mon)
From : Richard Conn <RCONN@Simtel20.ARPA>
Subject: ZCPR3 on the MD-2 et al
Hi, Kirk,
Very good message ... it looks like you anticipated every
possible response (within reason -- ie, you left off my nuking
Dayton). Anyway, as you have already surmised, there is really little
I can do for you from here. At a minimum, source to the BIOS is
required to analyze the problem, and the one MD-2 I accessed before
(which is now in Australia) was one of the first, to which Morrow was
willing (at the time) to provide the source. For any reasonable,
non-cookbook installation of ZCPR2 or ZCPR3 in the conventional sense
(ie, on the system tracks), we can't do anything without the source to
the BIOS. Then, it really is a rather simple task to modify the cold
boot routine to initialize the buffers, to select the desired options
in the Z3BASE.LIB file, etc, and then to bring up the resulting ZCPR3
System.
Unlike with ZCPR2, ZCPR3 adds another alternative --
Z3-Dot-Com ($49 from Echelon). This is an auto-installing ZCPR3 that
(1) takes just a few minutes to run in order to create Z3.COM and (2)
does not require the user to do anything other than select a few
options. No BIOS source, no worry about ROM versions, etc. Just
install and run. Then, once Z3.COM is created, you may want to set up
your auto-boot program to issue the command "Z3" in order to come up
automatically in ZCPR3 (STARTUP in ZCPR3 will run other things for
you), and you have a system that runs ZCPR3 from cold boot. It seems
to me like $49 is a small price to pay for the convenience and lack of
pain.
I feel that this is the best advice I can give you. This is a
solution to your installation problems.
Also, for the audience in general, Frank Gaude' informed me
tonight that Z3-Dot-Com has been brought up on the Compupro 8/16 and
the Z-100. He does not have much feedback yet from the users, so
there may still be some problems, but he feels good about the current
version.
Rick