Re: Pro-DOS v2.0 (Re: missing ProDos games)
Hi Marcos, The new version works great under SimCoupé - and it's really easy to set up an 8-drive system too: A floppy, internal RAM drive a couple of ATOM Lite drives and four external RAM drives. And because of the screen routine improvements (text and scrolling speed) text adventures run much, much better under v2.0. ;-) Chris. On 10/11/2013 22:05, Marcos Cruz wrote: En/Je/On 2013-11-09 21:42, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : So, basically v2.0 is a brand new version, sharing pretty much none of v1.9's code base. All the improvements sound great, Chris. I've used Pro-DOS with SimCoupe in order to try CP/M Forth systems and text adventures. I look forward to the new version.
Re: missing ProDos games
On 10/11/2013 22:58, da...@properbastard.co.uk wrote: CP/M was certainly something I seem to remember being discussed a few times in Swansea. Hmmm - I'll have to get a Pi sorted out soon, so I can get a SAM running again. My PC is far from stable, so I've not been able to run SimCoupe on it for more than a few mins at a time :( Lot's of things seem to have been discussed and never saw the light of day. I was even discouraged to continue with my HD interface because they were sure they could pull it off. History tells us different however. Wayne...
Re: missing ProDos games
Quoting Wayne Weedon wa...@fdos-design.com: On 10/11/2013 22:58, da...@properbastard.co.uk wrote: CP/M was certainly something I seem to remember being discussed a few times in Swansea. Hmmm - I'll have to get a Pi sorted out soon, so I can get a SAM running again. My PC is far from stable, so I've not been able to run SimCoupe on it for more than a few mins at a time :( Lot's of things seem to have been discussed and never saw the light of day. I was even discouraged to continue with my HD interface because they were sure they could pull it off. History tells us different however. It's a shame the Atom wasn't available just a little sooner I'm sure that ProDos would have been able to support this then.
Re: missing ProDos games
On 09/11/2013 17:39, Chris Pile wrote: P.S. - New version of Pro-DOS (v2.0) coming soon... ;-) Quite lucky we managed to save the source code then Chris, could of quite easily got into someone elses hands! Looking forward to seeing the new version. Wayne.
Re: missing ProDos games
Certainly was Wayne - thanks to you!! Have to say, though, that v2.0 shares pretty much none of the original code! What started out as a few tweaks turned into a total re-write!! Was good to have it as reference though. I'm starting to think I've forgotten more than I ever knew! ;-) It's now more like the program it should have been back in 1990/91! Chris. On 10/11/2013 18:34, Wayne Weedon wrote: On 09/11/2013 17:39, Chris Pile wrote: P.S. - New version of Pro-DOS (v2.0) coming soon... ;-) Quite lucky we managed to save the source code then Chris, could of quite easily got into someone elses hands! Looking forward to seeing the new version. Wayne.
Pro-DOS v2.0 (Re: missing ProDos games)
En/Je/On 2013-11-09 21:42, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : So, basically v2.0 is a brand new version, sharing pretty much none of v1.9's code base. All the improvements sound great, Chris. I've used Pro-DOS with SimCoupe in order to try CP/M Forth systems and text adventures. I look forward to the new version. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net
Re: Pro-DOS v2.0 (Re: missing ProDos games)
Quoting Marcos Cruz sam_coupe_list...@programandala.net: En/Je/On 2013-11-09 21:42, Chris Pile escribió / skribis / wrote : So, basically v2.0 is a brand new version, sharing pretty much none of v1.9's code base. All the improvements sound great, Chris. I've used Pro-DOS with SimCoupe in order to try CP/M Forth systems and text adventures. I look forward to the new version. -- Marcos Cruz http://programandala.net Always enjoyed playing Hitchhikers on SAM. Wish I still had a version of that! :(
Re: missing ProDos games
Quoting Chris Pile chris.p...@blueyonder.co.uk: Really huge and very interesting post snipped... WOW - this certainly sounds impressive indeed!
Re: missing ProDos games
Quoting Chris Pile chris.p...@blueyonder.co.uk: Certainly was Wayne - thanks to you!! Have to say, though, that v2.0 shares pretty much none of the original code! What started out as a few tweaks turned into a total re-write!! Was good to have it as reference though. I'm starting to think I've forgotten more than I ever knew! ;-) It's now more like the program it should have been back in 1990/91! Chris. The original was a great piece of work - and something SAM certainly needed... although it's a shame it wasn't available earlier, as it would have been a great item to package with the computer itself. CP/M was certainly something I seem to remember being discussed a few times in Swansea. Hmmm - I'll have to get a Pi sorted out soon, so I can get a SAM running again. My PC is far from stable, so I've not been able to run SimCoupe on it for more than a few mins at a time :(
Re: missing ProDos games
Also the file HiSoft-Devpac80(Gens-2-06-Mons-1-05) seems to be invalid. I think files are cut (a bad upload?) and have an incorrect length. I recovered both adventure files from Amstrad disks stored at the norwegian FTP. It does appear they are corrupt in some way. Chris.
Re: missing ProDos games
On 09/11/2013 16:09, SCjoe wrote: I recovered both adventure files from Amstrad disks stored at the norwegian FTP. It might be worth getting in touch with Steve Parry-Thomas (AKA SPT) who runs the Pro-DOS archive and let him know. I'm sure he would be grateful for a replacement .DSK/.CPM image of any corrupt files! :-) Chris. P.S. - New version of Pro-DOS (v2.0) coming soon... ;-)
Re: missing ProDos games
Hi, Chris, It might be worth getting in touch with Steve Hm, I sent him a message... without any reply. New version of Pro-DOS (v2.0) coming soon... ;-) Awesome! Have you a mind to support up to 4 CF-slots in the AtomLite+ (e.g. slot per CP/M drive?) http://img4.rajce.idnes.cz/d0406/8/8912/8912936_ee0ae33197d091a1cc1dcff8fe3b0fdd/images/IMG_1483.jpg?ver=2 Regards Josef
Re: missing ProDos games
Hi Josef, I've retained floppy support in the left hand bay to remain backwards compatible with version 1.9. And the fact that most people will have a floppy drive there. However, it does support the ATOM-Lite with a master and slave configuration in the right hand bay, this includes a booting ability via the AL-BOOT ROM. The system functions fine if it doesn't find a floppy in the left bay. It adjusts itself to whatever drives it finds in the system. So you could have a (Pro-DOS bootable) CF-Card and place it in one of your right bay CF slots. Which would work fine. Similarly, you could manually load and run the system off any of your CF slots, including the left ones. That would also work fine with the proviso that after boot your two left bay cards would not be visible to Pro-DOS. Pro-DOS v2.0 also has full support for MMC/SDSC and SDHC flash cards up to 64GB via Quazar's superb Trinity interface, it also saves any custom palette colours you have chosen to the Trinity EEPROM, and will automatically restore them on start up. V2.0 also supports up to four 1024k external RAM packs as RAM drives. With all of the storage options visible to the system simultaneously. Giving a potential total drive count of eight drives, and something like 196-Gigabytes of storage! The system has its own 1024k native format for any flash cards that were formatted by itself. This format is also shared with the external RAM pack drives. It also remains backwardly compatible with the CP/M DISK container format devised by Edwin for use with BDOS. So you can mix CP/M disks and BDOS records on one MMC/SD/CF BDOS format card if you wish. Pro-DOS divides MMC/SD/CF cards into a number of logical disks and are similar to BDOS records. The system is independent though, and doesn't require BDOS to be pre-loaded. In fact, v2.0 will boot as a DOS from a SAM floppy providing its the first file saved on the disk, in the same way as SAM/B/MASTERDOS. While I'm in a typing mood here are a few of the other changes in v2.0! There are probably lots of others I've forgotten, but will add them to the manual when I get motivated to do that tedious chore!! The screen output routines are over 50% faster than v1.9 (which was awful!) and noticeably so. The floppy disk routines are faster too. This is less noticeable though, due to the translation between CP/M's 128-byte and the SAM's 512-byte sectors. There is no more separate system files and boot disk either. The whole thing is one self-contained 32k program now, with the utilities automatically written to the internal RAM drive at start up. v2.0 is better on memory too, so even though it carries the system files with it it retains the same internal RAM drive size as v1.9, and gives you a slightly larger TPA - of some 63238 bytes. The internal RAM drive is drive A by default, with the left hand floppy designated drive B. However, if that isn't to people's liking there is a built-in SWAP command to software swap any pair of drives. So: SWAP A:B Will make drive A the left hand floppy and drive B the internal RAM drive. You can swap pairs of drives as often as you like, there are no restrictions. The old external COPY utility is now built-in to the OS, so COPY is now always available. As are the old PALETTE and DUMP utilities, they are built-in too. PALETTE has a few more parameters, as the system now has a flashing cursor. The cursors on, off, and over char colours can be separately changed along with the usual ink and paper colours. You don't have to change all palette parameters every time either, so if you only want to change the ink colour then you can. All of the built-in commands will accept a user number as well as the drive letter. RENAME now accepts wildcards and COPY will allow you to rename on the copy, also with wildcards. So, you can do things like: COPY A0:*.com D12:*.bat To copy all the .COM files from drive A user area 0 to drive D user area 12 - renaming them to .BAT files as they go. DIR now does a column alphabetised sort on the file list. Pro-DOS formatted CP/M floppy disks (720k/706k usable) can also be made to boot to Pro-DOS via F9 if you wish. Selectable at format time. All of the remaining external utilities have been re-written. None share any code from version 1.9. The old SAMREAD.COM utility is now called IMPORT.COM and is more flexible allowing you to import files from SAM floppy disks and MDDOS FAT12 floppies - which includes the ability to traverse subdirectories. Ideal for importing CP/M files downloaded from the 'net. The command line interface has been improved too. With more editing commands and also the ability to roll up and down the last 8 entered commands using UP/DOWN arrow. Similar to MSDOS. It's faster too. The cursor keys now return the Wordstar cursor control codes by default You can also hold SHIFT/SYMBOL/CTRL + cursor keys to re-map to three other sets of cursor control codes,
Re: missing ProDos games
Thinking they might have been compressed years ago I just tried the old MSDOS version of PKUNZIP (v1.01) which only reports the .ZIP is bad and says to use PKZIPFIX. I tried PKZIPFIX (v1.01) from the same MSDOS archive, but it failed to fix them. It does appear they are corrupt in some way. Either that or they were originally compressed with some obscure ZIP? Chris. On 21/10/2013 06:06, SCjoe wrote: Hi, the zip archives Deadline and CutThroats, at http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk/cpm_images.html seem to be invalid. Could anybody upload the working copies, please? Thanks. Josef
missing ProDos games
Hi, the zip archives Deadline and CutThroats, at http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk/cpm_images.html seem to be invalid. Could anybody upload the working copies, please? Thanks. Josef
