Date   : Thu, 10 Jan 1991 11:10:39 -0500
From   : Jay Sage <sage@ll.mit.edu>
Subject: ZSDOS on Xerox 820-II

Mike Sprague answered:

>> Hmmmm, seems strange that DR would try to keep you from using MOVCPM, when
>> it *seems* to be standard utility on a CP/M System Disk.  Odd!

   MOVCPM is a standard program that comes with CP/M, but it contains the
licensed software for that machine: the CCP, the serialized BDOS, and the
manufacturer's (or DRI's) proprietary BIOS.  It is not a utility that can be
moved from system to system; it is the basic operating system generation
program.

   SYSGEN, on the other hand, is a more-or-less universal utility.  It
extracts the operating system from the system tracks on a diskette and/or
writes it to a new diskette.  It does not generate a new system; it only
copies it.  It may be used with MOVCPM to put the system created by MOVCPM
onto the system tracks of a diskette for booting.

   If you got a synchronization error report when you ran MOVCPM, then the
operating system that you were running at the time was not one that was
created by that copy of MOVCPM.  Specifically, the BDOS in use either was not
the Digital Research BDOS (perhaps you has installed something else) or had a
different serial number.  People have published, by the way, the simple patch
for defeating the serial number check.

>> I was wondering if the problem was in that I had configured the system. 
>> Xerox supplied a utility called CONFIGUR which allows you to set the
>> defaults upon booting.

   CONFIGUR probably just changes values a specific locations in the BIOS
code, and this should have no effect on the operation of MOVCPM or the
installation of ZSDOS.

>> Chuckle it's the same machine, not a simpler one.  A 16/8 is nothing more
>> than an 820-II with the 16/8 board (8086 CPU w/128K RAM) installed!!

   Yes, but I would call a machine without the extra board and the software
complications required to deal with it a "simpler" one.  Even more reason to
contact Chris McEwen if you are still having trouble after generating a
clean, new system disk.

-- Jay Sage