Date   : Tue, 25 Feb 1986 14:03:56 GMT
From   : pete%stc.co.uk@BRL.ARPA
Subject: Re: ZCPR3 STARTUP

        My attempts to mail this have bounced twice now so, with
apologies, here it is for everyone:

> Rick:
>
> After much experimenting, I have gotten ZCPR3 up and running on
> my H89, using a BIOS mod written by Jerry Furst.  One problem,
> however:
>
> 1. ZCPR3 (correctly) expects to find STARTUP.COM and tries to run
> it on cold boot.
>
> 2. I created STARTUP.COM using ALIAS, consisting only of the LDR
> commands needed to load the system segments.
>
> 3. When ZCPR3 tries to run this ALIAS, it returns either an
> "Ovfl" error, or it fills the Shell Stack.  (Didn't think ALIAS
> used the Shell Stack!)
>
> 4. If I run the same ALIAS (STARTUP) from the ZCPR3 prompt, it
> works fine.
>
> I spoke with Jerry Furst, the BIOS mod author, and he reported
> that he had the same problem.  He was able to work around only by
> using the ZCPR2 STARTUP.COM program.
>
> The STARTUP feature is important to making these systems turn-key
> for users.  I can only figure that something is going wrong in
> trying to load the system segments.
>
> Help, please.  What's happening here?  Has this affected anyone
> else?  How do I fix it?
>
> Once I get this licked, I'll upload Jerry's auto-install ZCPR3
> files for the H89 with this fix included.  He has done a nice
> job, and you can install ZCPR3 from scratch on an H89 in about 75
> minutes without a hitch.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>                                 ...Dick Stanley
>
> stanley@isif


        I had similar problems with ZCPR3 on my Gemini (British)
system.

        In my case neither LDR or ALIAS would work until the whole
Z-system was running. I wrote a small 'C' program to substitute for
LDR. Then I found the answer.

        Which was to reassemble ALIAS and LDR from scratch. Not only
the SYSENV.LIB file but also all those others like Z3HDR.LIB and
CBIOSHDR.LIB get included. Having done this everything was fine.

        It seems that for everything that runs BEFORE the environment
is installed, using Z3INS is not enough.

        BTW, I had a small but annoying problem when linking ALIAS and
LDR. The libraries that come with the distribution disks (I got mine
from the New Jersey group via the British CPMUG) were assembled with a
version of M80 that only puts the first 6 characters of names in the
.REL file, while my copy of M80 exports 8 characters. This caused some
names not to match at link time. I worked round this by fixing the
sources of ALIAS and LDR. If I wanted to reassemble a lot of utilities
I'd rebuild the libraries.

        Now for a question. Does your PATH work correctly? At boot time
one of the programs in my STARTUP script downloads various utilities to
my RAMDISK. However I haven't been able to get the path searching to go
for this disk before the currently logged-in disk.  This is nullifying
the use of the RAMDISK, which I went for as an alternative to a number
of RCPs.

        Any help anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

        Peter Kendell <pete@stc.UUCP>

        ...!mcvax!ukc!stc!pete

        "The ultimate expression of law isn't order; it's prison"
-- 
       Peter Kendell <pete@stc.UUCP>

       ...!mcvax!ukc!stc!pete

       "The ultimate expression of law isn't order; it's prison"