clements@bbnccq.ARPA (Bob Clements) (10/17/86)
Hi, fellow CP/Mers and IBM PCers.
This is a followup to a request I made a couple weeks ago. I had
asked for help in getting 8-inch CP/M format disks working on my
IBM PC. Since I got a number of requests for copies of whatever
I learned, here's my summary.
To review, what I had was an IBM PC, a Maynard floppy disk controller
card which supports both 8" and 5.25" drives, and some low
level driver software. I needed the software that knows about
CP/M file structure and that would play with the above pieces.
I received one message that suggested I could do it the other way around,
namely write 8" MS-DOS files and then use one of the variants of
SWEEP that could read the MS-DOS disk on my CP/M machine. This wasn't
what I wanted, and I didn't pursue that path. It might work - I don't know.
Bill Wells at opal.berkeley.edu gave me a pointer to Xenocopy-PC,
by Fred Cisim at Xenosoft in Berkeley, CA. I called Fred and he
said he hoped to get that format done soon but didn't have it yet.
But he told me that he had a couple competitors who had done it,
and gave me their phone numbers! Now THAT's being HELPFUL!!!
So Thanks, Fred!
I wound up getting Uniform-PC from Micro Solutions, Inc. in
DeKalb Illinois. (There are two companies by that name.)
Uniform-PC did the trick and is actually pretty neat. It isn't
just the usual "copy from here to there" conversion program. It
integrates the foreign (CP/M) disk into the MS-DOS environment.
You can run a compilation on the IBM PC under MS-DOS with the
listing output pointed at the CP/M disk and it will write it as a
CP/M file. You don't have to write it as a MS-DOS file and then
perform a separate conversion step to get it into CP/M format.
There would be cases where this would be a real neat feature, on
5" CP/M disks as well as 8".
Uniform-PC does all the low level stuff too, formating, setting
disk parameters, etc. The driver I bought from Floppy Disk Services
was a waste of $50. It was written by Flagstaff Engineering. It came
with totally inadequate documentation, had no parameter setting
program for step rate, for example, and was basically useless.
When I called Flagstaff to ask a couple questions I was told
very bluntly that I would have to ask my questions through my dealer.
So in summary, I have a good working solution with my 8" drive
and controller (Siemens or Shugart drive, Maynard controller) from
FDSI and Uniform-PC from Micro Solutions. Uniform-PC costs $70.
Standard disclaimers. Everything is copyrighted/trademarked.
I have no financial interest in any of the above.
Bob Clements
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clements@bbn.com