Date   : Tue, 18 Jun 1991 10:45:39 -0400
From   : Jay Sage <sage@ll.mit.edu>
Subject: CP/M-86 Problem

   As a Boston Computer Society resource person (i.e., emergency problem
solver), I was just contacted by someone with a problem that I had no
immediate solution to.  Since I am about to go away on vacation for a month,
I hope that someone on the net will be able and willing to help this person.

   Ms Gale's father has been using his IBM XT clone for about ten years under
CP/M-86.  The person who set him up gave him no boot floppies (or he lost
them), and in the whole time he has never written anything to floppy. 
Suddenly the machine complains on boot-up of a disk error while trying to
read CPM.SYS.  Obviously, he would like to get the machine running again, at
which point Ms Gale plans to move the files over to MS-DOS.

   It sounds to me as if the CPM.SYS file has become corrupted (the
optimistic view) or that the whole partition has become corrupted (the
pessimistic view).  One obvious first step is to get from someone a bootable
CP/M-86 diskette that is appropriate for this hardware.  I've asked my
friends who might have had CP/M-86, but so far I have not found I copy.

   I have CP/M-86 for the ATR8000, but I doubt that it can work on a PC (the
disk is in an ATR8000 format that cannot even be read by Uniform or
MediaMaster).  I did copy the CPM.SYS file over to a diskette in another
ATR8000 format, which I could read on the PC, and I eventually got it onto a
diskette in CP/M-86 PC format.  I've sent this to Ms Gale; however, I don't
think this it will help her.  First, she won't have any way to get it onto
the hard disk, and, second, it may well be hardware dependent (I don't know
which of the OS components are included in this file).

   A second approach someone suggested to me is to run a program on the DOS
hard disk partition (the machine will come up in DOS) that can read files
from the CP/M partition.  The DEC Rainbow had such a utility, but I don't
know whether such utilities are available under generic MS-DOS or PC-DOS.

   Anyway, I hope someone out there can help.  If so, please contact Ms Gale,
as follows:

                Jill Gale
                Shott Fiber Optics
                122 Charlton Street
                Southbridge, MA 01550
                508-765-9744 x 207

I'd be interested in hearing by email of any progress that is made on the
problem.  Thanks.

-- Jay Sage, SAGE @ LL.MIT.EDU