Date : Wed, 12 Jun 1991 22:06:29 GMT
From : csus.edu!csusac!sactoh0!ijpc!ianj@decwrl.dec.com (Ian Justman)
Subject: Re: Help needed: Compupro 8/16 running concurrent cp/m
kevin@watnxt3.ucr.edu (Kevin Lund) writes:
> I'm having a bit of trouble with a Compupro 8/16; maybe somebody can help me.
I can. So can Marc Wilson (mwilson@crash.cts.com)
> I finally managed to get this thing to boot up, and it's now running concurre
> cp/m (and running it pretty well too). Problem is, I have only one boot disk
> which gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Haven't we all on all of our computers? :-)
> No problem, I have two drives, make a copy
> right? Well, the copy program fails consistently; as far as I can tell the
> problem is that it wants the two disks to have the same format (understandabl
> though it would be nice if it would format them itself...).
I believe the copy program WILL format a blank, if it deems it
necessary.
> Now, the disks
> I want to copy are all double-sided, but all the other 8" disks I have come
> from my imsai which has single-sided drives and so are formatted accordingly
> (well, I have a box of blanks but they were pre-formatted...single sided...).
>
> So, here's the core of the problem: my format program will not (as far as I
> can tell) re-format a single sided disk as a double sided. I've tried taking
> my most vicious magnets to SS disks but to no avail! It's like the
> computer KNOWS! Any ideas? Also, anybody know where I can get reasonably-
> priced 8" blanks?
That's because your computer DOES know the difference between a
SS and a DS diskette. (Actually, the drive knows better than the
computer does because there are TWO index sensors on most, if not
all, DS drives.) If you put a SS and a DS disk label side up
side-by-side, you'll notice that the index holes are in different
positions. A SS disk will have its hole about a quarter inch to
the right of an imaginary line you could draw down the center
parallel the media head access cutout. A DS disk will have its
hole about a 3/4" from said imaginary line. Translated: you're
shit out of luck trying to format those SS as DS disks. Don't
try to punch hole in them either because it doesn't work. It
will work with my Dynabyte, but not my CompuPro.
> Next question (as you can see, I have ccp/m but no manuals...), anybody know
> what I need to do to make the hard drive bootable? It's on a disk 3 controll
> and was semi-bootable when I got it so I know it can be done (had to be re-
> formatted though). I've tried sysgen and a couple other things along those
> lines with no success.
How many masters do you have? On top of that, what version of
CDOS (I prefer it over CCP/M) do you have? If you have more than
one, there should be several files, nameds depending on version,
which are loaders for specific controllers/drive types. If you
have earlier than 5.0, there will be loaders for whether you use
a System Support 1 or a PC Video card as a console, and whether
you use 5 1/4" or 8" floppy or a Disk 2 or a Disk 3 as a boot
controller (Disk 2 and Disk 3 are hard drive controllers, with
the Disk 2 useable on SA-4000 (I think) interfaces, and the Disk
3 with the ST-506 interface.)
> I guess that's it for now..oh yeah one other thing, I tried putting more than
> 1 meg of ram in but it doesn't seem to recognize it...is this a hard limit
> or did I just blow the dip switches? Thanks...
Nothing to do with the dipswitches. Even if you're using a CPU
286 (like I do), you're still locked down to a 1 meg limit.
Those switches on your RAM cards will let you put up to 16 megs
of memory online. BTW, are you using RAM 21 or RAM 22 memory
boards? Just kinda curious.
If you have any more questions, gimme a call at (916) 344-5360
and I'll try to help ya.