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Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:12 am
by nama
Not sure if the title to this thread is actually correct, but I have been talking to Steve and we were wondering if we, as a community, should start thinking about a standardized and hopefully simple way to archive real OSI disks, and the reverse, a way to create real disk from the archived images.
If we can find some way to do this then It would be great to get a database going between all the OSI'ers with disks so we can preserve what we have before it's too late and all our OSI disks are lost to time. Being a member of multiple retro computer communities (Apple II, Atari, Commodore, Microbee, and Sinclair) I know that these groups are well advanced in the archiving of their precious software. Even though the OSI community is small, I believe we should find some solution sooner rather than later.

I'm going to start by doing some research into possible ways to achieve this, but i'm really not much of a programmer or know anything about OSI disk format, so any thoughts are most welcome...

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:56 am
by nama
Today I tried the following which I found on this old thread:

http://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66

- Used a hex editor to strip out the first 4k of the OS65D v3.3 disk image.
- Via serial connection I loaded this 4k chunk at $2200
- tried the following three start location: $2240, $2245, and $225E

Basically the screen goes blank, and stays that way. Im curious what should I expect to happen. I'm guessing it should show some prompt where I could possibly type in OSI DOS commands? Maybe I'm doing something wrong in this process.

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:56 pm
by nama
Replying to myself again ;-)

I found a program called DISKREAD.lod in the Win OSI emulator. I have loaded this via serial on my machine and it seems to work. Although I was testing it with a blank unformatted disk, it seemed to step through the tracks and dumps 00's out the serial port.
So I guess this is how we do our disk backups.

The assembler file exists for this program and I was wondering if anyone here was smart enough to alter the code so that it did the opposite. Took data from the serial port and wrote it to disk? Just a thought.

Still haven't had any luck getting OS65D 3.3 to load using the method in the post above. Maybe someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:22 am
by Steve Gray
I brought up this same topic a while back. It seems even more important as time goes by. We definately need some standard format.

It seems we're all having hardware issues. I've been too busy lately to even look at my OSI machines. I am willing to look at the DISKREAD source once I get a functioning disk system... as to when that might be... who knows :-(

Steve

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 4:10 pm
by dave
Those are really good points. At the moment, the advantage of using the raw disk data format (straight disk dump including formatting bytes for each track / sector, starting at the index hole) is that it simplifies any emulator trying to access disk images. The disadvantage is that it complicates direct transfer of disk images to actual media, since the formatting has to be removed before calling standard write routines.

Without the formatting information, it would be difficult to exactly replicate a disk.

I think an intermediate format, either binary or xml, that preserves the track and sector information as a compact data structure could still support providing byte-accurate renderings to create emulator-compatible images or even a library interface for emulation, as well as construction of track-by-track contiguous data that could be written to media by OS65D. Ultimately, the ideal would be to have a documented format, and a python or C library to access the files and convert to various directly readable formats, as well as a command-line tool using the library, and a companion OSI disk image read/write utility, perhaps modified from one of the existing utilities, that would automatically handle the case of track 0.

I think you are both absolutely right that this is something that would be good to do sooner rather than later. Ideally, it would be great to build a resource similar to other communities, with a standard format, and a library of OS and other software images to get a computer or an emulator up and running. It would be really nice to get some of the rare decent quality software out there, if anybody still has copies. Something tells me it will be a tougher task compared with the C64 and Apple communities.

Anyway, first thing will be to get the floppy working, and generate some images of OS65D for C1 and C2/4/8, and if anyone has OS65U or CP/M images, get those up as well.

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:15 am
by glitch
I've got OS-65U and will have CP/M at some point in the near future (I've got CP/M 1.4, but the disks won't boot, and I'm pretty sure it's dead/dying media).

I'm currently working on a type/toggle-in serial loader for the 8080/8085, mostly for S-100 systems and my 8085 SBC project. I plan on porting it over to 6502 ASM, but unfortunately I'm less proficient at 6502 ASM for the time being. It should be a fairly easy transition though -- I have an OSI 510 triple-processor board in my Challenger III, so I can actually run the 8080 code anyway and get the I/O routines working in 8080 ASM first. The idea is to be able to load arbitrary code into systems with limited development resources.

My chief goal in eventually working on an OSI disk imaging system is to provide ADTPro-like functionality -- load the system monitor, let another computer "type" machine code into RAM using the monitor, and use that to bootstrap something that speaks a real serial protocol. The initial loader would probably be specific to OSI systems with serial console ports, but that could be typed in by hand for other OSI boxes using video displays. After that, the ACIA ports might be different, but the disk imaging software should be pretty universal between OSI machines.

Fortunately, thanks to Bill Dromgoole, I now have a working 64K RAM board with 48K populated in JEDEC-compatible 6116 SRAMs. That means no more chasing faulty 22-pin .4" sockets and flakey SEMI4200 SRAMs! It also means code can be burned to a 2716 and plugged into the RAM board. That will make getting a serial loader up and running much simpler. That part really shouldn't be too difficult, once I find time for it. After that, if people want to work with what I've got put together, I'd be happy to share my results and help in getting a native disk imaging utility written -- hopefully before more original media dies!

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:51 pm
by dave
Hi Glitch,

It would awesome to have a utility like ADT Pro for OSI. We have DOSDUMP (for track 0 and 1) and RAWDUMP (for 1-39), but these are read-only, and can't create a disk. Part of the problem with many OSI'ers faced with OSI systems and questionable disk drives is the lack of good physical media to test with.

Dave

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 5:37 am
by nama
Dave, It sounds like you're talking about me!

Something like ADT Pro would be amazing. I've used ADT pro with my Apple II quite a bit and it's a wonderful piece of software. Of course we wound't need anything quite as full featured or polished, just a simple method to bootstrap a system and make real floppies from floppy image files (dumps) would be awesome.

Phil

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 6:06 pm
by glitch
Indeed, that's what has kept me from getting CP/M up on my Challenger III...I can't just create new disks from images, even if I had the images! Rather, I have to get around to posting disks to Mark Csele in Canada, getting him to copy his original disks, and mailing the results back -- hoping, of course, that they don't get exposed to real X-Rays at the border.

I also want to work with 8" disks, since that's what my Challenger III uses. One day, I'll probably recreate the 6850-based OSI floppy controller on a piece of S-100 protoboard, but for now AFAIK OSI systems are the only things that will actually read OSI formatted floppies.

Re: Software disk archiving and disk creation

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:25 am
by MK14HAK
I have uploaded an 8" OS65D3.3 image file. OS65D338_1.65U This image has been constructed from the 5.25 image supplied with the winOSI emulator using Debug on the PC.
Why ?... because I dont have any bootable media. I intend dumping this down to my OSI via RS232 and reconstructing an 8" bootable disk in the next few weeks.
It also gives us an 8" image for the winOSI emulator !

All the necessary conversion changes required for track and sector layout, buffer sizes, DOS code, BASIC code, Bexec*, BASIC utilites and macine code utilities etc have been made.

It includes some bug fixes and will work with the original and Cegmon monitors. Also included are two utilities from Tutorial disk 2 and the demo data file handling programs from the OSI manual.

Disclaimer: I had only the info available from the OSI manual to go by as far as the BASIC utility changes and track layout went. The other changes I discovered myself during many hours coding. I have given the image a reasonable test using the winOSI emulator and it works fine to date.

If you find any bugs or have comments please post here.

( winOSI : Cegmon_F6.rom or SYN600. Machine Type 5 C4 505 board or Type=3 500 board )

MIKE