On 9/30/22 17:24, Will Senn wrote:
Brian et al.,
Interestingly, I can save a memory file from the TRS-80 M100 out to my
mac, running dl, but I can't seem to load:
on m100 in BASIC:
10 CLS
SAVE "TEST.DO",A
F8
Run TEENY.CO (after doing some HIMEM shenanigans)
> C FFFFFF.XX (C=KLSQ)
> S TEST.DO
> C FFFFFF.XX (C=KLSQ)
on mac:
cat TEST.DO
10 CLS
cp TEST.DO TEST2.DO
for a file to upload and after messing around for a bit, turned on
verbose in dl:
dl -v /dev/cu.usbserial-FD310
DeskLink+ v2.0.000-6-g6065601
Serial Device: /dev/cu.usbserial-FD310
Working Dir : /Users/wsenn/t
Opening "/dev/cu.usbserial-FD310" ... OK
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"TEST .DO" TEST.DO
"TEST2 .DO" TEST2.DO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on m100, reentered TEENY.CO
> C FFFFFF.XX (C=KLSQ)
> L TEST2.DO
FF Err
This is one of the many ways teeny is teeny at the expense of
user-friendly and forgiving.
The "FFFFFF.XX" in the prompt is there to remind you of the file
pattern. You have to fill all spaces, space-pad any names that are
shorter than 6 characters.
So to load the file is
L TEST2 .DO
one space after the 2
This is a limitation of teeny.
Feel free to skip the rest of this, but here's why that is...
It's kind of a long story what's going on and why.
A real TPDD (re-badged Brother FB-100) drive is very simple and has a 24
byte field for the filename on the disk, and it doesn't care what's in
that field at all other than null in the first byte means no file. But
other than that anything goes, even nulls in other positions than the
first byte, the field isn't even null-terminated, it's 24 bytes and any
bytes at all.
The Tandy version of the drive shipped with a tpdd client called
"floppy" on a disk with the drive, and THAT program, when it saves files
to disk, the actual bytes written to the disk are fixed-length 6.2.
"TEST.DO" gets written to disk as "TEST" 2 spaces ".DO" 15 spaces. This
is not something you can normally see directly. Normally you only see
what some tpdd client chooses to show you. Most of them display
filenames the same way as the M100 main menu. But with
github.com/bkw777/pdd.sh (and a real drive) you can see the real on-disk
filenames.
Since any other tpdd clients that came later need to be compatible with
Floppy, teeny and ts-dos and everything else also writes filenames to
disk like that.
And because of that, they all also expect to find them like that when
they read disks too.
That means that all disks have filenames like that, and all tpdd clients
expect them, and because all clients expect them, drive emulators have
to fake them.
So dlplus collapses the spaces when it gets a filename from a client,
and inserts the spaces when it gives a filename to a client, so the
filename on your pc is more convenient "TEST.DO" but it says "TEST .DO"
to the client.
For most clients, you never know that this convert-unconvert is
happening behind the scenes for every filename. Both the clients and the
servers are doing something sort of pointless, but they are matched up
and both doing the same thing and so you never see that behind the
scenes your filename was converted at each end of the transaction and
was actually a different name while in flight. You saved TEST.DO, and
you got TEST.DO back out, and you never knew it was TEST .DO while stored.
And finally the last bit is that in the case of teeny, it's so minimal
that it doesn't do the kind of reformatting for user convenience that
ts-dos and everything else does. Teeny just takes whatever you enter,
and plugs that in to the tpdd protocol command it sends to the drive
verbatim. And that means, since the filename on the "disk" is actually
"TEST space space .DO"(*) you have to type that into teeny.
I keep saying "it's TEST .OD on-disk" but really that's just on a real
disk. On YOUR disk, it actually is "TEST.DO" because dlplus is
converting back again on the fly.
I did warn you you could skip that ;)
Help :)
Will
On 9/30/22 3:32 PM, Will Senn wrote:
Progress! I changed usb ports and ran:
dl -vb TEENY.100 /dev/cu.usbserial-FD310
then on m100:
RUN "COM:98N1ENN"
to which it apparently sent, cuz eventually, m100 displayed:
12 Seconds...
(ENTER for just below HIMEM)
End Address for TEENY.CO
Loaded TEENY.CO
OK
Yay. Meanwhile back on the mac:
"dl -b" will now exit.
Re-run "dl" (without -b this time) to run the TPDD server.
(base) nebula:~ wsenn$ dl /dev/cu.usbserial-FD310
DeskLink+ v2.0.000-6-g6065601
Serial Device: /dev/cu.usbserial-FD310
Working Dir : /Users/wsenn
Opening "/dev/cu.usbserial-FD310" ... OK
More Yay. Now what? Off to figuring out how to actually use the
newfangled setup to send / receive files :). BTW, don't set POWER off
to 2 minutes when you're trying new stuff - really annoying!
Will
On 9/30/22 3:13 PM, Will Senn wrote:
Brian et al.,
I got the cable and plugged it into my serial usb adapter. I then:
git clone https://github.com/bkw777/dlplus.git
cd dlplus/
make clean all && sudo make install
no errors, so I ran it and figured out how to tweak:
dl -bTEENY.100 /dev/cu.usbserial-3A20
it told me what to type on the m100, so i did and after pressing
enter, the m100 said:
?DS ERROR
On the dl side, it merrily went on its way without complaint.
Thoughts as to what the problem might be or how to troubleshoot?
I'm pulling out my linux laptop and dusting off a windows laptop
just in case that helps...
Thanks,
Will
On 9/27/22 3:31 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
On 9/27/22 14:48, Will Senn wrote:
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the details, it'll take me a while to work through this,
Things have been figured out and added to by by countless people
for 40 years, so by now there is just a lot of answer for every
question.
but
it sounds believable and achievable. I have purchased one of the
ideal cables you mention. If I understand correctly, the ideal
cable should work fine hooked up between my dell and the m100
because the dell has a db-9 serial port. My mac on the other hand
doesn't so I require a USB-Serial adapter to make like the Mac has
a DB-9 serial port? Then, I should be able to start talking to the
m100 via the ideal cable and USB-Serial connector plus any gender
changer needed between cable and USB-Serial adapter, right?
No gender changer needed, because that is one of the items that
defines "ideal" in this case. The M100 has a
mostly-normal-but-one-thing-backwards serial port, and the one
backwards thing is the connector is female. So, it's an uncommon
combination to have a 9-25 null-modem cable with a male db25, but
they are made and so it's just a matter of hunting down specific
models.
Almost any pc that has a 9-pin com port conforms to a standard that
eventually became standard. Exceptions are very exceptional, like
the Cambridge Z88. Anything else can be counted on. usb-serial
adapters come in both male & female, and you can find special units
with weird wiring, but generally any usb-serial adapter with a male
plug is designed to essentially take the place of the legacy com
ports built into old motherboards.
So, you can consider the 9-pin side the same whether it's a pc with
real com ports of a usb adapter. The only detail left to consider
is a less-important one of the screws vs nuts. By rights any male
9-pin should have nuts and the cable should have screws, but on
this detail a lot of usb adapters are pretty random. So if you
wanty everything nice you have to actually check the pictures and
make sure the adapter you're looking at has nuts or screws. On that
wiki page I listed some choice usb adapters with everything ideal.
So yes the same serial cable works the same way either to an older
pc with a real com port or a newer pc that needs a usb adapter,
which is again one of the things that defines "ideal" to me.
There are actually bespoke cables you can buy that are usb on one
end and db25 male DCE on the other end which would go right from a
pc to a m100 in one piece, but that cable would be so non-standard
that it's no good for anything else. I prefer keeping the usb part
separate, and bog standard, so it can be replaced later with any
other, used for other things, etc, and the serial cable likewise,
even though it is a little bit special, at least it can be used
equally with a usb adapter or directly to a pc that doesn't need a
usb adapter.
If you want to add a 3rd piece, you can get even more bog-standard
by using an ordinary modem cable, which has the right plugs on both
ends but just isn't null-modem wired inside. You can add the
null-modem part in the form of a little 9-pin mini-null-modem. They
are no longer as dirt common as they used to be, but you can still
get them. The advantage to this idea is a 9-25 modem cable is hands
down the most common ubiquitous kind of cable. Not special at all.
This places the extra part in the middle of the cable instead of
hanging off the back of the 100, and is physically pretty small. If
you're not using a usb adapter then it IS hanging off the back of
the pc, but at least it's small and doesn't cause too much
stick-out leverage from something hanging off the port. It's just a
little harder finding one that's male-female instead of male-male
or female-female. But they exist and I think I have link for that
arrangement on that page too in the initial description at the top.
As for the TPDD stuff, once I get the cables sorted out, I will
work on bootstrapping and getting the client on the M100 and a
server for my mac.
You'll use the same serial connection for anything/everything
regardless of tpdd, so at least you know you're not wasting any
time/effort.
