Z80 Winchester Utilities

[Boydie]

Don't know if this is already widely available. It's an image of Acorn's Winchester Utilities Disc for the Z80 Second Processor.

It adds a virtual CP/M disc image to a hard disc, for use as Drive C, similar to DOS+ and the 512.

I'm sure I had it working on a real Z80 2P hooked up to my Master back in the days when it had a real winchester unit and ran ADFS unpatched, but on the Pi copro with Datacentre CF drive and MultiOS patched ADFS it can't find the drive. I'm hoping a BeebSCSI and unpatched ADFS will have more success...

[DutchAcorn]

Interesting, thanks for sharing! I only knew of the solution that was developed by JG Harston. See my attempts with that here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9852&p=116838

I never quite got that to work, even with a real Z80 copro. It works sort of, but it takes very long to start up and there are errors accessing files. I am probably doing something wrong there...

Anyway, this is a welcome alternative to try!

[DutchAcorn]

Ok, had a go at this. The BeebSCSI is found and a logical harddisk is created using HDMAN. But that's as far as I get. The DRIVES command shows only drives A and B and trying to access drive C: results in a bDos error.

Is there documentation available on how the partition can be used in CP/M?

[Boydie]

Sadly not. I acquired all my Z80 stuff nearly 25 years ago now and haven't used it much for about 20.
So far as I can remember, I got all the Z80 software from Trintity College, Cambridge when they were selling it all off. The Winchester Utils presumably came as part of that lot. They only had Z80 second processors so it must have worked with them, rather than with an Acorn Business Machine.

Looking at the disk image, there appears to be an awful lot of documentation at the end of the disk, including a revision history of the Z80 Tube ROM, which would imply that winchester compatibility was present right the way back to version 1.21. A brief perusal of this would suggest the way to boot from HD may be:

Start the second processor to the * prompt rather than booting CP/M
Select ADFS and the HD
Hopefully, $.CPM is there
Boot using *CPM from the HD

Edit: Am I being overly optimistic, or does a lot of that documentation look like source code, potentially for "ZTUBE210", which presumably would be V2.10 of the Z80 Tube ROM (current Pi Z80 version is V1.21)?

[Boydie]

See also:

http://mdfs.net/Software/Tube/Z80/ABC/notes

This explains how the BBC series boots from MFM discs

[DutchAcorn]

..Looking at the disk image, there appears to be an awful lot of documentation at the end of the disk, including a revision history of the Z80 Tube ROM, which would imply that winchester compatibility was present right the way back to version 1.21. A brief perusal of this would suggest the way to boot from HD may be:

Start the second processor to the * prompt rather than booting CP/M
Select ADFS and the HD
Hopefully, $.CPM is there
Boot using *CPM from the HD

That helped! With *CPM.Z it starts

Code: Select all

Acorn CP/M 2.2 - HDBios 2.10

It boots into A:, which is a hard drive partition.

Next challenge would be: how to copy files from floppy disks (the disk drive does not seem accessible)?

Edit: Am I being overly optimistic, or does a lot of that documentation look like source code, potentially for "ZTUBE210", which presumably would be V2.10 of the Z80 Tube ROM (current Pi Z80 version is V1.21)?

Facinating.

[DutchAcorn]

...
Edit: Am I being overly optimistic, or does a lot of that documentation look like source code, potentially for "ZTUBE210", which presumably would be V2.10 of the Z80 Tube ROM (current Pi Z80 version is V1.21)?

It does look like Z80 source code (attached).

[hoglet]

This looks very exciting!

[DutchAcorn]

The disk image is a 200K ssd. A CPM disk is image normally 400K, it seems only side 0 is now imaged. Since there was interesting stuff at the end of the image there may be more on side 1?

Any chance of imaging the original disk as a dsd 400K image?

[DutchAcorn]

I found out how to access the floppy drive from CP/M booted from the hard disk (*CPM.Z); the disk drive is mapped to G:

So using that I could copy files from the floppy drive to the hard disk image.

An advantage using this setup is that a floppy disk is no longer needed to start CP/M from the hard disk.

[Boydie]

The disk image is a 200K ssd. A CPM disk is image normally 400K, it seems only side 0 is now imaged. Since there was interesting stuff at the end of the image there may be more on side 1?

Any chance of imaging the original disk as a dsd 400K image?

Sadly, the other side is blank. I tried imaging it, just in case, but it’s empty.

[egel]

Next challenge would be: how to copy files from floppy disks

The BeebSCSI on the Raspberry Pi to 1MHz bus interface PiIMHz is much faster than the J.G.Harston IDE solution, but it looks that it still has problems with copying some (large?) files under CP/M. No strange characters or bars on the screen, but it looks like it just freezes.
I used PIP B:=G:*.*

[vela025]

Ok, had a go at this. The BeebSCSI is found and a logical harddisk is created using HDMAN. But that's as far as I get.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but can you remember how you did this? I have a BeebSCSI, from HDMAN when choosing to format drive 0 it initially says formatting for a second before saying "formatting error", loading up the second time reports " bad free space map - disc should be reformatted" at the bottom of the menu screen and verify harddisk reports defect A1 at 002F00 on loop. My drive parameters are set up as the default (I've tried changing these to the ones given on the BeebSCSI github, but then formatting still fails as well as no longer being able to access the disc in ADFS.

[dp11]

On the sdcard what size is the .dat file?

[vela025]

On the sdcard what size is the .dat file?

I'm using the images from https://www.domesday86.com/wp-content/u ... UN_2_5.zip so they are 511.9mb (524,140kb). When I use the hdman prpgram they end up empty 0kb, the same also happens when I use HDMAN with the same .dat files in BeebEm...although curiously this does get further (it instantly says formatting and moves to verifying before it hangs).

[dp11]

Over on the other thread I think i may have fixed the issue : viewtopic.php?p=359594#p359594

[DutchAcorn]

Ok, had a go at this. The BeebSCSI is found and a logical harddisk is created using HDMAN. But that's as far as I get.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but can you remember how you did this? I have a BeebSCSI, from HDMAN when choosing to format drive 0 it initially says formatting for a second before saying "formatting error", loading up the second time reports " bad free space map - disc should be reformatted" at the bottom of the menu screen and verify harddisk reports defect A1 at 002F00 on loop. My drive parameters are set up as the default (I've tried changing these to the ones given on the BeebSCSI github, but then formatting still fails as well as no longer being able to access the disc in ADFS.

The format option is only provided for if your ADFS drive is not yet formatted. Normally you should use option B in the Hard Disc Manager; “Initialise for CP/M”. It then creates virtual hard disc partitions.

For more information have a look at the “H-Help” option in the Hard Disc Manager’s main menu.

[vela025]

Woohoo! Thanks Paul, I really should have read the help files included! That has worked a charm. Do you know if there is a way to increase the virtual drive from 8mb?

[Iggypop]

https://mdfs.net/Software/CPM/Acorn/HardDrive/

So i dowloaded CPMHD.ssd from above link.

used this program from the read.me to create a place for cpm to live on my scisibeeb
10 out%=OPENOUT("$.CPMDISK")
20 FOR A%=1 TO &8100:BPUT#out%,&E5:NEXT A%
30 PTR#out%=&800000
40 CLOSE#out%

REM-ed line 30 because my computer choked on it, and i dit not understand why you would want to change the file pointer before closing the file.

created a new system floppy with sysgen
copied the files from the cpmhd disk to the new disk

changed to the new disk

typed:
PUTBIOS HDBIOS.SYS
PUTCCP SJCCP.SYS
MOUNT adfs:$.CPMDISK

Put the new disk in drive A (selected the new disk-image in the go-tek)
BREAK-D
*CPM

and it seemed to work. greeting me with.

Acorn CP/M 2.2 - HDBIOS 1.24
SJCCP version 1.40

C0>_

But is there a way to boot from C: ?
and what use do i have from SJCCP.SYS
and how does this winchester utilities disk fit in ?
I tried HDMAN, the second option and all it did was to create a directory structure on the beebscsi

I'm completely new to CP/M

Igor

[DutchAcorn]

Woohoo! Thanks Paul, I really should have read the help files included! That has worked a charm. Do you know if there is a way to increase the virtual drive from 8mb?

Not sure. Of course, CPM does not support a directory tree. I believe 8 MB is quite a lot of space for a CP/M drive.

[DutchAcorn]

https://mdfs.net/Software/CPM/Acorn/HardDrive/

So i dowloaded CPMHD.ssd from above link.

...

There are 2 options for CP/M hard disc support
1) the mdfs.net option developed by JGH
2) the Acorn Winchester Utilities option recovered by Boydie, image for the utilities disc in the first post of this thread.

Option 1) won't boot from C:, you'll need to boot from the CP/M system HD disc.

Option 1) is a bit more logical imo in that the hard disc partition is mapped to the C: drive. In option 2) the partitions are mapped to drives A: to D:. The floppy disc is mapped to drive G:. Having it mapped to the A: and B: drives may help for compatibility reasons, the Acorn CP/M software assumes running from floppy disc A: / B:

My advice would be to go for the Acorn Winchester Utilities. It is easier to set up and also supports booting from the hard disc partition.

[AndyG]

Old post but thought it relevant

Tried the Winchester tools in BeebEM using BBC Master 128 SCSCI drive. Was able to initialise the HD for CPM using HDMAN but cannot see how to boot from the HD. Any pointers would be much appreciated ... I have tried a few things mentioned above but failed. Obviously doing something wrong but as new to this figuring it out

Thank you in advance
Andy

[DutchAcorn]

Can you see and access a CPM directory on the virtual Winchester drive? What files are in there?

[AndyG]

Hi Paul

No … using ADFS explorer I can see the CPM directory and its contents but in BeebEM I must not have the right configuration to read the Winchester scsi disks.

I boot to ADFS, but think there must be an enabling step I am missing

Andy

[AndyG]

USing ADFS explorer I copied the CPM folder and its contents onto my IDE CF card.

On my actual Beeb B... fitted with PiTubeDIrect, Turbo MMC and IDE CF .... Booted into Z80 and ran CPM as follows

*dir CPM
*run Z

So the image works at least.... not sure what drive the floppy is now mapped to

[DutchAcorn]

…
So the image works at least.... not sure what drive the floppy is now mapped to

The floppy drive is mapped to G:

[AndyG]

Thanks working fine (so far) now on a real BBC with IDE CF card

Andy

[AndyG]

After some testing it seems to work OK with the IDE CF card. You can get the turbommc to act as a floppy drive provided you setup the disks at the * prompt before entering cpm with cpm.z

Changing floppy discs with turbommc requires a reset and repeat of above but it allowed me to transfer 10 cpm discs to the CF card. I also configured the CPM with SJCCP.SYS as I like the way it keeps track of which User I have selected (that I did with BeebEM after I figured out what I was doing wrong getting it to boot ... I then copied the cpm folder from scsi0.dat to the cf card using adfs broswer. I found that it kept the disc contents intact when I re-initialised the disc it using hdman so it would transfer SJCCP to the CF boot files).

[Coeus]

REM-ed line 30 because my computer choked on it, and i dit not understand why you would want to change the file pointer before closing the file.

That BASIC program is initialising the directory area of the new disk image to &E5 to be just like a freshly formatted disc so CP/M sees all directory entries as empty/erased.

Moving the pointer is to then extend the rest of the file to the full size. By allocating the space at the start it avoids a “Cannot extend” error later on if the CP/M disc image gets another ADFS file placed after it.