mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu (Myron A. Calhoun) (02/13/89)
I have two Z-100's, each with dual 5 1/4" and dual 8" floppies and lotsa
memory. I have a third Z-100 with only dual 5 1/4" floppies. All are
running MS-DOS 2.xx, and I have the distribution disks with lots of what
I recall is BIOS source code.
A Vector-4 Z80/8088 computer with 10-megabyte hard drive and 596-kilobyte
hard-sectored floppy drive recently "fell into my lap"; and everything
seems to be in good working order. The computer also contains an
"almost" S-100 bus (its cards don't use on-card voltage regulators).
I have been able to acquire a hardware documentation manual, too!
What I'd like to do is move the Vector disk card and both drives into my
smaller Z-100. (I'm willing to have them external to the chassis.)
I have the hardware "smarts" to make an "almost" S-100 card into a "real"
S-100 card, assuming it can be done at all (I haven't yet really studied
the manuals), but I've never "played" with the software enough to have
any idea how to tell it when I add two more drives.
Can someone point me in the right direction on either how to proceed or
how to learn how to proceed?
--Myron
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Dr. Myron A. Calhoun, W0PBV, (913) 532-6350 (work), 539-4448 (home).
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UUCP: ..!rutgers!ksuvax1!mac -or- ..!{pyramid,ucsd}!ncr-sd!ncrwic!ksuvax1!macmlewis@unocss.UUCP (Marcus S. Lewis) (02/17/89)
OK, let me give it a try. You have (upto) three operating systems you want to use the Vector board with, CP/M-85, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS, right? If you run it in MS-DOS 2 or 3, a device driver is probably the simplest way to do it, which only prevents you from booting off the board. BYTE mag had an article about three years ago about adding a 96 TPI drive to an MS-DOS system, and REMark and Sextant have had discussions on this as well. CP/M is going to require you to hack the BIOS. You will have to read the sources VERY carefully, and basically mimic the data structures used by the Z-207 when you write the code. The source file of greatest interest is going to be something like DEFZ207.ASM or .INC. I assume you have a complete manual for the Vector board. Do you have the BIOS sources for it as well? If I am not mistaken, the disk code for both CP/M 86/86 runs on the 8088, and the code assembles under CPM-86. You need to add the data structures and controlling code to the BIOS86 and the drive tables to the BIOS85. Come, somebody else give this a shot! He had to cross post to comp.misc to get help out of me, and I have never had the time to hack on my Z. Marc Lewis