Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

thank you. I believe I have a connection problem between the floppy board and the data separator board. the pin headers look to have been tinkered with, and by repositioning the data separator board, I can get different results.

I was able to press D, get activity, and ERR #9 A* at the bottom of the screen.

thoughts? and where would I find the schematics for the floppy drive and data separator connector? I don't recall seeing the drive in the SAM's manual.
Mark
Posts: 297
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Mark »

Look for MPI B51/52 drive manuals on OSIWEB here #Manuals

It looks like you've successfully loaded at least the first track or two of the disk and your data separator is working if you can get to A* prompt.

Error #9 is "Can't find track header within one rev of diskette".... it's looking for the start of track marker byte sequence and is unable to find it.
Depending on what has loaded, you may be able to use OS65D to view track data & load/save data from memory.

I believe memory location $265D contains the track# (in decimal) OS65DV3 was trying to load when the error was encountered.
Generally, the OS is loaded from the specially formatted first track to $2200, then the next few tracks are loaded, including BASIC up to track 6, and overlays from track 12? Then BASIC tries to load and run the BEXEC* program usually found on track 14+

So at this point your disk may be partially corrupted or it may be dirty heads on the disk drive or the data separator could be slightly out of alignment, or perhaps the flux has just faded from the diskette?

Perhaps you could try "init"-ing a new floppy to see if formatting works... [Write protect original floppies especially on dubious old OSI hardware!]

You could try uploading a disk image via serial port and writing it using OSI DiskTool
I'll attach a disk image of "Customer Demo" below...

Sometimes with old floppies you may only get a single good read from them before the oxide flakes off or the disk is no longer readable. Let us know what you have found so that unique floppies are not lost to the ages.
Good Luck!
-Mark



Here is an OS65D quick reference:

Code: Select all

OS65D Commands 
ASM		Load the assembler and extended monitor. Transfer control to the assembler.
BASIC		Load and transfer control to BASIC
CALL NNN=TT,S	Load contents of Track "TT", sector "S" to memory location "NNNN"
D9		Disable error 9, required to load some V1.5, V2.0 files on 8" systems.
DIR TT		Print sector map of track "TT". For each sector, the number of pages is given.
EM		Load the assembler and extended monitor, Transfer control to the extended monitor.
EXAM NNNN=TT	Examine track. Load the entire track including formatting information into location "NNNN".
GO NNNN		Transfer control (GO) to location "NNNN".
HOME		Reset track count to zero and HOME the current drive's head to track zero.
INIT		Initialize the entire disk. i.e. erase the entire diskette (except track 0) and write new formatting information on each track.
INIT TT		Same as "INIT", but only operates on Track "TT"
IO NN,MM	Changes the Input I/O distributor flag to "NN", and the Output pointer to "MM".
IO ,MM		Changes only the output flag.
IO NN		Changes only the input flag.
LOAD FILNAM	Loads the named source file, "FILNAM", into memory.
LOAD TT		Loads source file into memory given starting track number "TT".
MEM NNNN,MMMM	Sets the memory I/O device Input pointer to "NNNN", and the output pointer to "MMMM"
PUT FILNAM	Saves source file in memory on the named disk file "FILNAM"
PUT TT		Saves source file in memory on track "TT" and following tracks.
RET ASM		Restart the assembler
RET BAS		Restart BASIC
RET EM		Restart the extended monitor
RET MON		Restart the Prom monitor (via RSTVECTOR)
SAVE TT,S=NNNN/P	Save memory from location "NNNN" on track "TT" sector "S" for "P" pages.
SELECT X	Select disk drive "X" where "X" can be A,B,C, or D. Select enables the requested drive and homes the head to track 0.
XQT FILNAM	Load the file, "FILNAM" as if it were and object file, and transfer control to location $3A7E (317E on 8"V3.2, 327E on 5" V3.2)
XQT TT		Load the file beginning on track "TT" as if it were an object file and transfer control to $3A7E (317E on 8"V3.2, 327E on 5" V3.2)
Notes:
- Only the first 2 characters are used in recognizing a DOS command. The rest up to the blank are ignored.
- Commands can be used in the basic mode in the form DISK!"DOS" where DOS represents one of the commands above.
- All memory locations should be in hex.

RE: D9 - The versions of OS-65D earlier than V3.0 loaded the head and initialized the ACIA at the rising edge of the index hole. Since early versions contained no gap after the index hole the ACIA may be initialized in the middle of a byte. This would set the ACIA out of sync with the data. It would then take several revolutions of the disk before the ACIA got back in sync and the track header found. For this reason there may be problems in reading earlier version files. The error encountered is error 9. (No header found after one revolution.) D9 disables error 9 checking.

OS65D Error codes
1 - Can't Read Sector (Parity Error)
2 - Can't Write Sector (Parity Error)
3 - Track Zero is write protected against that operation
4 - Diskette is write protected
5 - Seek Error (Track header does not match track)
6 - Drive not ready
7 - Syntax Error in command line
8 - Bad Track number
9 - Can't find track header within one rev of Diskette
A - Can't find sector before the one requested
B - Bad sector length value
C - Can't find that name in directory
D - Read/Write attempted past end of named file.


OS65D  Input / Output Devices
Input				Output 
(values in Hexadecimal) 
Low bit set is selected input, output goes to all selected set bits
00-Null				00-Null
01-Serial ACIA FC00		01-Serial ACIA FC00
02-Keyboard 440/540	02-Video 440/540 board
04-UART on 430 board	04-UART on 430 board
08-Null				08-Line Printer
10-Memory			10-Memory
20-Disk Buffer 1		20-Disk Buffer 1
40-Disk Buffer 2		40-Disk Buffer 2
80-550 board Serial		80-550 Board Serial Port


OSI  OS65D devices for BASIC PRINT#, LIST#
#1 - ACIA Serial port on C1, C2, C4,C8 ($FC00/$F000 on C1)  In & Out
#2 - Video OSI540 (output) / Polled Keyboard (input)
#3 - UART Serial port on some modified 430 boards $FB03 (S1883  UART) In & Out
#4 - Centronics parallel port on 65D (null input) $F400
#5 - Memory I/O
#6 - Disk1
#7 - Disk2
#8 - CA-10X Serial RS-232 on 550 boards, 16 possible ($CF00, $CF02, ... $CF1E
#9 - Null
*To save BASIC program in memory to cassette, load program then LIST#1 or LIST#3 depending on port.
Attachments
c4-custdemo.zip
OSI C4P Customer Demo disk dump image
(29.79 KiB) Downloaded 680 times
Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

here's the disks. 39 look to be factory/retail, plus a few blanks. some pics are duplicated.

would anyone be interested in borrowing these to archive? what I'm after is a solution to be able to reliably use a gotek or modern IDE floppy with my C4P system with minimal learning curve :D

let me know if any of these look unique.



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Mark
Posts: 297
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Mark »

I think that is the most number of original OSI diskettes I've seen in one place since ~1980 or so at an OSI dealer.

I've seen the MDMS, DAC, DEMO, & OS65D3.2 disks as well as a couple of the Games disks but the educational disks are new to me as well as the complete games series.

I'm happy to make digital images of them with either greaseweazle and/or OSI dump. Either way the result can be HFE images which you can use with Gotek & FlashFloppy. It seems like a good complete collection that should be archived.

To connect a Gotek or any industry standard drive, you'll need a data separator between the drive(s) and the OSI. There are previous threads about this on OSIWEB, but I don't know where you can find Klyball's "D-13" board these days. You could always hand wire one up.
A couple D-13 threads: Original https://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?t=220 Ver2 https://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?t=539

The Gotek will work as a drop-in replacement for a standard floppy drive. My C4PMF system has a Gotek and 1/2 height 5.25" drive replacing the original full height OSI drive. A data separator (not D-13) is wired inline inside the OSI. I have an adapter that goes from idc to card-edge for the Gotek connection to the OSI floppy cable. (I may have used the MPI-B51 data separator wired inside the C4. It's wrapped up & it's been almost 40 years since I did that -- memory fades, but the picture you sent of the data separator triggered a memory of doing that when I converted the single drive to dual 1/2 height drives.)

Cheers,
-Mark
Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

thank you. I went ahead and ordered a greaseweazel. had my eye on this for a while and have many uses for it.

also found and ordered the PCBs for the separator. pretty sure I have all the components I'll need.

this will be fun! I'll check in soon.
Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

I got the greaseweazel and have been playing with it. I have a 3.5 1.44 mb drive and a 5.25 360k drive set up and able to read. only testing with pc/ibm disks now.

I'm using the flux my floppy GUI which simplifies things.

I can read to various formats and mount them and they seem to work. but this is a little overwhelming when I look outside the standard disk sizes and formats for which there are profiles.

what would be the proper drive type/settings for an OSI floppy?

and how are the .d65 images made? I notice the osi emulator will open an hfe file. I'd like to get up the nerve to try reading one of my OSI disks and try to load it in the emulator.
Mark
Posts: 297
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Mark »

So originally the ".65D" images were made using Ed's OSI Dump utility from an OSI with a serial connection simply recording all the decoded bytes from one rotation of an OSI disk.

Now you can convert between OSI dumps & HFE images using "OSIHFE" available on the tools page here: (Mark's Lab) It can also read SCP "SuperCopy" disk images, which can contain multiple revolutions of each disk track. [Sometimes rev 2 or 3 or even 5 may read better than the first one.]

Internally WinOSI uses a conversion similar to OSIHFE to generate an in-memory "OSI dump" disk image to use with the emulator. It doesn't have flux-level emulation.

I've only used the command line utilities for greaseweazle.
Although the 5.25" OSI disk only uses 250K clock rate, there were early problems with the Gotek disk emulations. HxC and Flashfloppy HFE conversions from the OSI raw dumps worked best with 2 sided images (one completely empty) with a 500K flux rate, even though the flux changes were written as a pair of bits. This is probably unnecessary today, but double sided 500K images do work fine.

OSIHFE should be able to handle many combinations of sample rates and sides, but 40 track images should be used for 5.25" disks. 80 track disks can be confused for 8" floppies.
F.Y.I. Once Gotek Flashfloppy has been added to an OSI, it is possible to use 8" HFE disk images on a 5.25" setup as long as they are written with 5.25" bitrate, giving you access to larger floppy images & more storage. (There is an OSIHFE option for this). You have to use 8" versions of OS65D of course to take advantage of the space.
Since they read at 250K instead of 8" 500K, I/O is a little slower but not that you'd really notice.

Using a 360K (40TPI) 5.25" drive from my OSI, I read a C1P Victory Software disk. Specify the tracks (cylinders) I want to read, 0-39 and the side h=0

First read the image from the drive, store as SCP. It defaults to a 3 revolution image.

Code: Select all

C:\greaseweazle\win>gw read --drive 1 --tracks="c=0-39:h=0" mytest.scp
Reading c=0-39:h=0 revs=3
T0.0: Raw Flux (134138 flux in 711.74ms)
T1.0: Raw Flux (117006 flux in 616.61ms)
T2.0: Raw Flux (118180 flux in 623.08ms)
T3.0: Raw Flux (119397 flux in 623.97ms)
T4.0: Raw Flux (117406 flux in 615.81ms)
T5.0: Raw Flux (119010 flux in 626.68ms)
T6.0: Raw Flux (92462 flux in 615.83ms)
T7.0: Raw Flux (126884 flux in 649.34ms)
T8.0: Raw Flux (121760 flux in 627.34ms)
T9.0: Raw Flux (107617 flux in 620.97ms)
T10.0: Raw Flux (119242 flux in 627.13ms)
T11.0: Raw Flux (100802 flux in 627.00ms)
T12.0: Raw Flux (100001 flux in 635.04ms)
T13.0: Raw Flux (130400 flux in 644.41ms)
T14.0: Raw Flux (123771 flux in 611.19ms)
T15.0: Raw Flux (119466 flux in 614.70ms)
T16.0: Raw Flux (118965 flux in 613.23ms)
T17.0: Raw Flux (115979 flux in 625.13ms)
T18.0: Raw Flux (125846 flux in 622.53ms)
T19.0: Raw Flux (120276 flux in 612.70ms)
T20.0: Raw Flux (120578 flux in 620.57ms)
T21.0: Raw Flux (116539 flux in 601.13ms)
T22.0: Raw Flux (133532 flux in 618.00ms)
T23.0: Raw Flux (135715 flux in 611.52ms)
T24.0: Raw Flux (155508 flux in 799.92ms)
T25.0: Raw Flux (117293 flux in 607.89ms)
T26.0: Raw Flux (136449 flux in 621.66ms)
T27.0: Raw Flux (139990 flux in 613.44ms)
T28.0: Raw Flux (156095 flux in 799.23ms)
T29.0: Raw Flux (160389 flux in 793.16ms)
T30.0: Raw Flux (179038 flux in 798.95ms)
T31.0: Raw Flux (147548 flux in 771.49ms)
T32.0: Raw Flux (116975 flux in 617.35ms)
T33.0: Raw Flux (116999 flux in 618.21ms)
T34.0: Raw Flux (118965 flux in 625.74ms)
T35.0: Raw Flux (120625 flux in 628.53ms)
T36.0: Raw Flux (116784 flux in 615.80ms)
T37.0: Raw Flux (116658 flux in 615.41ms)
T38.0: Raw Flux (120666 flux in 625.37ms)
T39.0: Raw Flux (115129 flux in 615.49ms)

Next, view contents.. what did we get?

Code: Select all

C:\greaseweazle\win>osihfe -d mytest.scp
OS65D File  Track range
-----------------------
 OS65D3      00 - 12
 BEXEC*      14 - 14
 CREATE      15 - 17
 DELETE      13 - 13
 DIR         18 - 18
 DIRSRT      19 - 19
 RANLST      20 - 21
 RENAME      22 - 22
 SECDIR      23 - 23
 SEQLST      24 - 25
 TRACE       26 - 26
 ZERO        27 - 28
 COPYRA      29 - 29
 ASAMPL      30 - 30
 D24         31 - 31
 D32         32 - 32
 D48         33 - 33
 COPIER      34 - 35

46 entries free out of 64
...Looks like a standard OS65D OS disk with a few different files.

Now convert to HFE (or OS65D raw disk image) & test results (view disk layout)

Code: Select all

C:\greaseweazle\win>osihfe mytest.scp mytest.hfe
osihfe: Wrote file 'mytest.hfe'

C:\greaseweazle\win>osihfe -t mytest.hfe
Test: disk type OS65D5
Trk 00 Boot @ $2200/8 pages
Trk 01 1/8
Trk 02 1/8
Trk 03 1/8
Trk 04 1/8
Trk 05 1/8
Trk 06 1/1 2/2
Trk 07 1/8
Trk 08 1/8
Trk 09 1/5
Trk 10 1/8
Trk 11 1/4
Trk 12 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1
Trk 13 1/8
Trk 14 1/8
Trk 15 1/8
Trk 16 1/8
Trk 17 1/8
Trk 18 1/8
Trk 19 1/8
Trk 20 1/8
Trk 21 1/8
Trk 22 1/8
Trk 23 1/8
Trk 24 1/8
Trk 25 1/8
Trk 26 1/8
Trk 27 1/8
Trk 28 1/8
Trk 29 1/8
Trk 30 1/8
Trk 31 1/8
Trk 32 1/8
Trk 33 1/8
Trk 34 1/8
Trk 35 1/8
Trk 36 1/8
Trk 37 1/8
Trk 38 1/8
Trk 39 1/5 2/2

C:\greaseweazle\win>osihfe mytest.scp mytest.65d
osihfe: Wrote file 'mytest.65d'

C:\greaseweazle\win>dir mytest.*
 Volume in drive C is Win10

 Directory of C:\greaseweazle\win

02/26/2023  04:29 PM            92,160 mytest.65d
02/26/2023  04:02 PM         1,680,384 mytest.hfe
02/26/2023  03:59 PM         9,290,430 mytest.scp
               3 File(s)     11,062,974 bytes
Hmmm 9MB to 90K - what a savings!

Good Luck!
-Mark
Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

Such detailed, thoughtful, complete replies and help from you Mark. I really appreciate it.

I think this is what I was looking for:
C:\greaseweazle\win>gw read --drive 1 --tracks="c=0-39:h=0" mytest.scp

And the complete detailed workflow is perfect. let me stew on that and play around.

My 74121 chips arrived today and the klyball board is en route, so hopefully I can start looking at the data separator this week.
Dokken
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Dokken »

I have the Klyball D13 V2 board assembled. This V2 version does not have as much thorough documentation as the original version. The schematic is there, but some parts values are not listed. So I'm not 100% confident on cap/res values in a couple of cases.

I'm starting with a gotek flash floppy which I use to test other systems. set as DS0 with the D13 jumpers as best as I can determine, it seems to be communicating. reset, D will bring the gotek (with text display) to life. The D press does make the track listing 'jitter' on the display, but nothing loads. it seems to be trying.

I set the timing via the trim pot to 6ms following the procedure I could find. and I played with this quite a bit, trying up/down slightly. same result on gotek.

I'm wondering if I have a properly setup .hfe file. would anyone be willing to post a known working gotek-ready file so I can eliminate my creation errors as a possibility?

thank you.
Mark
Posts: 297
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Challenger C4P estate sale find project

Post by Mark »

These are disk images I pulled off my gotek that I've booted from many times.

OSI Dealer Demo and Plot Basic
Also a custom bootable image of David Gesswein's OSI Disk Test which doesn't work 100% on Gotek, but may be useful to test a real drive.

I believe these all came from OSIHFE originally. OSI Disk Test was made into a floppy bootable image with a program named "BootThis" available on my tools page.

I was playing with Flash Floppy configs at some point. What is currently on my gotek is the file "FF.CFG" which contains:
interface=shugart
index-suppression=no


However I don't believe these settings are necessary for using existing images.
Attachments
OSI_HFE_DISKS.zip
C4PMF disk images
(226.27 KiB) Downloaded 638 times
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