Hello! Malcolm, what is a Ferguson Big Board ROM? I mean obviously its the board's ROM array, but what is a Ferguson Big Board to begin with? Is it a computer that ran the OS back when such things were more commonplace? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drw...@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Malcolm Macleod <malc...@avitech.com.au> wrote: > Hi Peter, > > Thanks for the fast response. > > That worked, when used with the SIMH command "SET HDSK1 FORMAT=SSSD8S". > > Note that I needed to use altairZ80.exe downloaded from your site for this to > work (ie "V3.9-0 build 1625"). The Windows executable of V3.9-0 downloaded > from the main SIMH site generated errors mounting the IMD file. > > FYI - I'm using altairZ80 to rebuild a Ferguson Big Board ROM from source. > AltairZ80 is a great platform for this work. Thanks for making it available. > > Malcolm. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Peter Schorn > Sent: Tuesday, 23 September 2014 3:03 AM > To: simh@trailing-edge.com > Subject: Re: [Simh] altairZ80 floppy disk binary files > > Hi > > 1. The file format for the AltairZ80 DSK device is basically a sequence of 77 > tracks with 32 sectors of 137 bytes (CP/M 2 can also handle disks with 254 > tracks). This is modeled after the FD-400 hard-sectored floppy drive. > > 2. If you want to mount an IMD disk under CP/M 2 use the cpm2.zip from here > http://schorn.ch/cpm/zip/cpm2.zip and use the command > > attach hdsk1 <yourfile.imd> > > to mount the IMD file "yourfile" as disk J: > > Note that the BIOS of the supplied CP/M 2.2 only supports 128 bytes sectors. > I updated cpm2.zip to include cpm2_imd which demonstrates this > - just use altairz80 cpm2_imd and a blank SSSD 8” IMD will be mounted on > drive J: > > Peter > ----- > peter.sch...@acm.org > > > On 22.09.14 14:32, Malcolm Macleod wrote: >> A couple of questions about virtual-floppy-drive files under altairZ80.exe: >> >> >> >> 1. SIMH’s file-format for representing floppy drives >> >> >> >> Can anyone point me to some information about the file-format for >> Floppy Disk Drives in altairz80.exe under SIMH ?? Section A.2 of >> Appendix 1 of “simh_doc.pdf” says that: “Floppy disks are represented >> as unstructured binary files of 8b data items. They are nearly >> identical to the floppy disk images for Doug Jones' PDP-8 simulator >> but lack the initial 256 byte header. A utility for converting between >> the two formats is easily written”. However, I’ve not been able to >> find a description of how these files are structured. For example, >> I’ve noticed that when I create a blank disk in altairz80.exe (eg by >> using the command “ATTACH >> DSK1 NEW.DSK”, then formatting it using FORMAT.COM on the supplied >> CPM2 >> disk) that the floppy disk file seems to have an extra 9 bytes between >> the actual sector data, so it doesn’t seem to be just raw sector data. >> >> >> >> 2. How do I mount ImageDisk (IMD) disk images under altairz80? >> >> >> >> The “AltairZ80 Simulator Usage” PDF (altairz80_doc.pdf) makes >> reference to IMD files being supported, but I’ve not been able to find >> any information about how to do this. For example – if I want to >> mount an existing CP/M 2.2 SSSD 8” IMD image, with 26 x 128 byte sectors, as >> B: >> (under altairz80.exe), how do I do this? >> >> >> >> Thanks, >> >> Malcolm. >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Simh mailing list >> Simh@trailing-edge.com >> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh >> > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > Simh@trailing-edge.com > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh > > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > Simh@trailing-edge.com > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
