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Rom-dos

Lutiana

Lutiana

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So I was looking around for some different versions of DOS to see what is available and I found this. Its called ROM-DOS and is designed to be booted from a just about anything.

Here is what I am wondering. Would it be possible to replace the BASIC part of the 5160 (or 5150) BIOS with ROM-DOS?

Doing this would mean you have a fully functional DOS OS onchip, this making diagnostic tasks easier.

What do you guys think?
 
I have an 8 Bit ISA Card with that daylight rom dos on a chip, my version was modified to only work in a 286 not a 8088 even though the card is 8-bit.:mad:

Better Solution:

An 8Bit IDE Card and a CF<>IDE connector and CF Card, you get the same results with many more benefits.

With the Acculogic IDE Card "as is" unmodified firmware, you can connect a 128 meg CF Card to the Acculogic as C: drive, and 512megs as D: drive, ton of room and all on 2 chips that take up little power, little space, and make no noise.

Modify the firmware and you might be able to use gig size CF cards, leave that up to Hargle and his upcoming IDE creation :D

I compared the variety of CF Cards I have to actual IDE HD's on my Acculogic on an IBM PC XT, the CF Cards were faster according to Spinrite.
 
lutiana said:
Here is what I am wondering. Would it be possible to replace the BASIC part of the 5160 (or 5150) BIOS with ROM-DOS?
Click to expand...

Go back and take a look at the ROM space required for ROM DOS and compare it to the 16K occupied by BASIC.

ROM-DOS is a bit of a misnomer, if I understand the literature correctly. DOS is stored in a ROM(s), but the ROM itself is treated as a ROM-disk--that is, code isn't executed directly out of it.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Go back and take a look at the ROM space required for ROM DOS and compare it to the 16K occupied by BASIC.

ROM-DOS is a bit of a misnomer, if I understand the literature correctly. DOS is stored in a ROM(s), but the ROM itself is treated as a ROM-disk--that is, code isn't executed directly out of it.
Click to expand...

Apparently it needs 48k - 90k, a 186 or higher processor.

So its a no go on the 8088 like I suggested. *shrug* I guess you learn something new every day... :D
 
I was thinking that a DOS Cartridge for the IBM PCjr. would have been very welcome indeed when the machine has but one floppy disk drive. 64KB, which is the normal maximum cartridge size, would have been sufficient.
 
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What could be useful for the 16K or so of space occupied by BASIC might be a good debug monitor (memory examine, modify, register dump, I/O port operations, floppy read/write files, maybe even a FORTH interpreter or DEBUG-like utiility). It might save a bit of headscratching when you couldn't get the machine to come up from disk.

Of course, you could always leave it for a language interpreter, like, say, BASIC?
 
Chuck(G) said:
What could be useful for the 16K or so of space occupied by BASIC might be a good debug monitor (memory examine, modify, register dump, I/O port operations, floppy read/write files, maybe even a FORTH interpreter or DEBUG-like utiility). It might save a bit of headscratching when you couldn't get the machine to come up from disk.
Click to expand...

Zenith PCs had a ROM machine-language monitor. As far as I know, they were the only ones that did. It couldn't save any files, just boot the disk drives.
 
I always thought that was a neat feature with the Zenith, my 151 had that. Apple II's did also (IIe atleast) a microassembler and monitor were built-in. (I think it was call -151).
 
Fallo said:
Zenith PCs had a ROM machine-language monitor. As far as I know, they were the only ones that did. It couldn't save any files, just boot the disk drives.
Click to expand...

There also was the IBM PS/2 N45SL, which was a rebranded Zenith notebook that retained the ROM "Monitor" too. Much like a DOS DEBUG, with video mode shifting, disk loading, diagnostics, setup, and flashing BIOS capabilities added in. The utilities can be helpful when needed, so useful enough.
 
IBMMuseum said:
There also was the IBM PS/2 N45SL, which was a rebranded Zenith notebook that retained the ROM "Monitor" too. Much like a DOS DEBUG, with video mode shifting, disk loading, diagnostics, setup, and flashing BIOS capabilities added in. The utilities can be helpful when needed, so useful enough.
Click to expand...

Do you have an ROM image of that? I wonder if it would work on non-Zenith platforms...
 
Chuck(G) said:
Do you have an ROM image of that? I wonder if it would work on non-Zenith platforms...
Click to expand...

I'd have to see if I can dump it out. As a note I wanted to bring up before, why would ROM DOS require an 80186/80188 at minimum? Someone would actually use the op codes that the 80186/80188 added over the 8086/8088 level just to exclude the enormous base of 8086/8088s?

My T1000 laptop (ROM DOS 2.11) is an 8086 CPU, the N45SL is an Intel 386SL...
 
I'm finding it hard to believe that somebody put a dependency on the 80186 in there. If anything it's to make sure you didn't move it to another machine. ;-0

A copy of DOS in ROM should run fine on almost anything.
 
IBMMuseum said:
I'd have to see if I can dump it out. As a note I wanted to bring up before, why would ROM DOS require an 80186/80188 at minimum? Someone would actually use the op codes that the 80186/80188 added over the 8086/8088 level just to exclude the enormous base of 8086/8088s?

My T1000 laptop (ROM DOS 2.11) is an 8086 CPU, the N45SL is an Intel 386SL...
Click to expand...

The product says that the ROM DOS was designed for use in embedded systems. The 80186/88 were primarily also used in embedded systems. The development environment for the DOS he is using may have assumed that this DOS was for use with embedded systems. Stranger things have occured.
 
Great Hierophant said:
The product says that the ROM DOS was designed for use in embedded systems. The 80186/88 were primarily also used in embedded systems. The development environment for the DOS he is using may have assumed that this DOS was for use with embedded systems. Stranger things have occured.
Click to expand...

When DOS is in ROM it is a bit of an misnomer: ¨Disk Operating System¨. The utilities on the T1000 and N45SL tend to be specific to those units for their functionality. And an embedded system seems to suggest that diverse programs will not be run on the unit (the personal computer has taken off so well for it´s adaptibility, and DOS started that process by a relatively documented interface to support many different programs and hardware).

Finally, how many op codes did the 80186/80188 have over the 8086/8088?...

I don´t doubt that the PC helped develop hardware designs like embedded systems using x86 architecture, and DOS was probably the dominant operating system to do it in those case...

But I still can´t believe that a version of ROM DOS would be designed to run on a minimum of an 80186/80188 CPU...
 
IBMMuseum said:
When DOS is in ROM it is a bit of an misnomer: ¨Disk Operating System¨. The utilities on the T1000 and N45SL tend to be specific to those units for their functionality.
Click to expand...

Ditto the ROM DOS on Tandy 1000s.

IBMMuseum said:
Finally, how many op codes did the 80186/80188 have over the 8086/8088?
Click to expand...

The 186 has all of the 286's real mode instructions, which are:

PUSHA
POPA
INSB
INSW
OUTSB
OUTSW
ENTER
LEAVE
BOUND

...plus the ability to use immediate values other than 1 on rotate and shift instructions, meaning that (for example) you can do SHL BX,2 instead of MOV CL,2 SHL BX,CL. You can also use immediate values with PUSH, POP, and IMUL.
 
Right, but we're already knowing several rom stored versions of dos were on non 80186 systems, though I agree that these versions would likely be expecting some specific hardware addresses and potentially commands and/or checks to not run on alternative systems in case of corruption.
 
A card I bought:

prom.jpg


It auto boots to c:\

Giving you the rom dos called daylight, the cards are not cheap and offer very little space.

The version I have above is like 24k, not too big for a dos drive.

Connecting a CF<>IDE on an 8bit IDE Card will give you the same results and muchy more c:\ and d:\ drive space and cheaper.
 
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IBMMuseum said:
My T1000 laptop (ROM DOS 2.11) is an 8086 CPU, the N45SL is an Intel 386SL...
Click to expand...

Don't know about the N45SL, but the Toshiba T1000 treats its ROM drive just like a boot floppy; the DOS system files get loaded into RAM and run as usual. I've got the format written up somewhere on my hard drive. It's FAT12, with a 1k header saying which sectors hold CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

The Philips :YES had DOS Plus in ROM (at least, according to some accounts; the picture of its motherboard shows ROM chips with Digital Research copyright notices). Since I've never managed to get hold of the contents of its ROM, I don't know if it runs DOS Plus from ROM (which I think would be possible) or copies to to RAM like the Toshiba.
 
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